Mordecai Manuel Noah | |
|---|---|
 Portrait by John Wood Dodge, 1834 | |
| Born | July 14, 1785 |
| Died | March 22, 1851 (aged 65) New York City, US |
| 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]
- ^ "Jewish Virtual Library, Mordecai Manuel Noah". Retrieved 2008-01-10.
- ^ New York Jewish History Archived 2013-05-14 at the Wayback Machine, New York State Archives, Jewish History Resources
- ^ "Antisemitism, Mordecai Manuel/Cart Catalogue". January 2010.
- ^ I. Goldberg, Major Noah: American Jewish Pioneer (1937); L.M. Friedman, Pilgrims in a New Land (1948), 221–32; DAB, s.v.; S.J. Kohn, in: AJHSQ, 59 (1969), 210–4; B.D. Weinryb, in: The Jewish Experience in America, 2 (1969), 136–57; R. Gordis, ibid., 110–35; I.M. Fein, ibid., 82–101.