Mordecai Manuel Noah | |
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Born | |
Died | March 22, 1851 New York City, US | (aged 65)
Occupation(s) | Diplomat, journalist, playwright |
Known for | Jewish toleration |
Mordecai Manuel Noah (July 14, 1785, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania – May 22, 1851, New York) was an American sheriff, playwright, diplomat, journalist, and utopian. He was born in a family of mixed Ashkenazi and Portuguese Sephardic ancestry and was the grandson of Jonas Phillips.[1] He was the most important Jewish lay leader in New York in the early 19th century,[2] and the first Jew born in the United States to reach national prominence.[3] He is best known for envisioning a homeland for the Jewish People in Upstate New York, named "Ararat". Long taken by the idea of a Jewish territorial restoration, Noah, in 1825, helped purchase a tract of land on Grand Island in the Niagara River near Buffalo, which he named Ararat and envisioned as a Jewish colony. Though the proposal elicited much discussion, the attempt was not a success and Noah’s pretensions as ruler were ridiculed. After the failure of the Ararat experience, Noah turned more strongly to the idea of Palestine as a national home for Jews. As the best-known American Jew of his time, Noah in 1840 delivered the principal address at a meeting at B’nai Jeshurun in New York protesting the Damascus Affair. [4]