Mordecai Manuel Noah

Mordecai Manuel Noah 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. He was the most important Jewish lay leader in New York in the early 19th century, and one of the first Jews born in the United States to reach national prominence. He is best known for envisioning a homeland for the Jewish people in upstate New York. Long taken by the idea of a Jewish territorial restoration, in 1825 Noah purchased a tract of land on Grand Island in the Niagara River near Buffalo, New York, which he named Ararat. He erected a monument on the island and envisioned the establishment of a Jewish colony there. Though the proposal elicited much discussion, the attempt was not a success. 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.