Jewish history’s big turning points often start with expulsions. Mass movements of our kind tend to be precipitated by some higher power being like, OK, time to get rid of our Jews, with the general population of whichever locale either acquiescing or egging the government on. The Spanish Inquisition. Medieval banishments. Or, in modern times, frog-in-pot-of-boiling-water moments of antisemitism, like the time Theodor Herzl witnessed the Dreyfus Affair and promptly opened a falafel stand on the Tayelet. (I paraphrase.)
But we are now in the midst of something unprecedented: there are two waves of Jewish migration (or, more accurately, migration narratives; getting to this) underway, but in opposite directions, across the very same national border. Two groups of Jews—Canada-bound American Jews, and U.S.-bound Canadian ones—each presented as fleeing to the other place.
First there were the American Jews (all three of them, if that) fleeing Trump’s regime on account of it being a bit too gung-ho in its fight against antisemitism, in ways that are unpleasant generally and may backfire on Jews specifically.
Then a scant three months later, they’re followed by the Canadians who saw the re-election of the Liberals as a sign that Canada will never take its antisemitism problem seriously. By “the Canadians” I mean pro-Israel media personality Dahlia Kurtz (yes, the same Dahlia Kurtz who misinterpreted a book by Netanyahu in a bookstore display as anti-Israel propaganda). On X, she captioned a video of an Israeli-flag-involving motorcade as follows: “It’s official. I’m moving to Florida. I am not safe in Canada. And this is how Florida appreciates Jews — and humanity. I am meeting with immigration lawyers tomorrow. I am not kidding. Also — this will make my fight for Western civilization stronger than ever.”
I have so many thoughts. One is that if you want to see an Israeli flag coming out of a car, you don’t actually have to leave Canada. You can wait at a Wychwood Barns-area bus stop and one may pass by, but still no bus in sight. (I speak from recent experience.) Another is that “I’m moving to Florida….this will make my fight for Western civilization stronger than ever” is art, and needs to be put in a museum.
Then there’s right-wing Toronto-based (or, sometimes-Toronto-based) commentator Sue-Ann Levy, who has opined about her decision to spend winters in Florida:
“I have watched my city decline into one rampant with drug addicts, Jew-haters and encampments. I hate going downtown. So it has been a welcome relief to travel to Florida the past few winters as snowbirds. Aside from escaping the snow, we’ve left the anti-Semitism and a declining city behind.”
That passage, and the piece it comes from, suggests a complex web of motivations, some political, some aesthetic, and some having to do with the fact that Toronto in winter is too damn cold.
There is also a complex figure named Joe Roberts, another fighter of the fight against antisemitism, who moves back and forth between the two countries every so often, always with a political pronouncement about the principles behind it. Roberts at any rate says he moved back to the States in December, therefore not prompted by the recent Liberal victory.
I’m sure there are others. I know there are. I know that there are more Jews moving between Canada and the United States than have made pronouncements about doing so. The long-term impact of any of these moves, high-profile or ordinary folks, on the net Jewish population of either nation has yet to be seen. There is also of course the thing where Jews move to or from countries that aren’t Canada or the United States—Israel, but not only—which would further impact numbers.
But I get it. Moving from the U.S. to Canada is left-coded, while from Canada to the U.S. is right-coded (or just earn-more-money-coded). It was ever thus. People also do this move for apolitical reasons. Anecdotally, it’s about where someone or their spouse happens to find a job. This may contribute to my skepticism about after-the-fact pronouncements. So yes, it’s both that I doubt the people threatening to move will do so, and that I doubt the ones who say they moved for political reasons were not at least substantially motivated by more banal and idiosyncratic factors.
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Narratives begin to take on lives of their own, with any North American Jew making one of these moves finding themselves cast as refugees in media coverage.
The Jason Stanley Goes to Canada news cycle, above all, has been a thing to behold, and yes, I take responsibility for my own small role in it. When Stanley walks from one room to another, somebody writes an article about it. Toronto Life: “‘I want my kids to grow up in a free country’: Philosopher and professor Jason Stanley on his decision to leave the US”, The Guardian: “Yale professor who studies fascism fleeing US to work in Canada,” Vanity Fair: “The Fascism Expert at Yale Who’s Fleeing America.” And countless others, many in major outlets as well. All of this for a move that was already partly underway before Trump’s second inauguration. All this for an A-list professor voluntarily moving from one elite North American university to another.
One of the academics written up for heading for Canada, Chagai Weiss, gives little indication of viewing this move as a flight of any kind. Here’s what he posted—and on Elon Musk’s X, not Bluesky, so we’re not looking at a lefty purist:
“I am joining the University of Toronto as an assistant professor & Bronfman Chair in Political Science, cross-appointed w the Center for Jewish Studies. I feel lucky to join a super vibrant academic community in such a cool city! Truly a dream come true (timing isn’t bad either)!”
To me, this reads as an anodyne some-professional-news announcement from someone who happens to be moving from a postdoc to a faculty position, expressing—in a parenthetical at that!—that he’s not a Trump supporter. A follow-up post even confirms that Weiss is not burning a bridge with the U.S., but rather doing a kind of national yes-and, building his academic network wherever he goes. It is not the remark of someone who believes the U.S. to be effectively Nazi Germany and never plans to set foot in it again.
Indeed, even Timothy Snyder, one of the three big-leagues Yale profs who made headlines for defecting, put out a statement about how the media got it all wrong: “I did not leave Yale because of anything Trump is doing; the chronology and the psychology are all wrong; I was not and am not fleeing anything.”
So what’s really happening? Are Jews fleeing in both directions? Or is there essentially a prewritten narrative from each polarized side about why whichever moves happen when they do, even moves that would have happened regardless?
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The bizarro-world, mirror-image two-way refugee-but-not ‘crisis’ is significant more for cultural reasons, for state-of-the-discourse ones, than for anything more material. For one thing, neither Canada nor the United States is banishing its Jews, or anything close. Each country has its issues, and it’s my sense that the U.S. has the more troubling ones. But as a practical matter, Jews can and do live and thrive in both places. Yale did not cease permitting Jews to be professors, nor did Canada ban driving through town with Israeli flags on your car.
This is then one of those cases where the significance is found in the absence of significance. Or in simpler terms: I don’t think there’s an answer to whether Canada or the U.S. is over now for Jews. The fact that both are widely viewed (albeit by different political teams) as desirable destinations suggests things might not be as dire as all that.
The CJN’s opinion editor Phoebe Maltz Bovy can be reached at [email protected], not to mention @phoebebovy on Bluesky, and @bovymaltz on X. Subscribe to The Jewish Angle wherever you get your podcasts. We’ll have more updates on Substack and The CJN’s own daily newsletter.
