Mordecai Manuel Noah

Mordecai Manuel Noah was born in Philadelphia on July 19, 1785. He was the first son of Manuel Noah, an immigrant from Mannheim, Germany who had served in the Revolutionary War, and Zipporah Phillips, whose grandfather served as Hazan of the Shearith Israel Congregation of New York. Much of Noah’s early life and many of his beliefs were heavily influenced by his maternal grandfather, Jonas Phillips. When Noah was 7, his father left home; Noah’s mother died shortly afterwards, leaving Mordecai and his younger sister Judith in the care of their mother’s father. Noah’s grandfather greatly influenced him both as a Jew and as an American. Despite the fact that three of Noah’s four grandparents were Ashkenazi, Jonas Phillips steered young Mordecai towards the Sephardic traditions, which, at the time, had deeper roots in the United States and garnered more respect and status within the Jewish community. Although his grandfather would only live until 1803, many of Noah’s attitudes, such as his ardent patriotism and his dedication to the Jewish and general societies, were cultivated while under Jonas Phillips’ tutelage.

These attitudes made Noah eager to involve himself in public life. The power of the written word, especially in the form of drama, was evident to him from a young age. He engaged in writing in various forms through out his life. As a playwright he wrote Fortress of Sorrento (1808), She Would Be A Soldier (1819), and Siege of Tripoli (1820), which was produced many times under different titles. Noah also was one of the most conspicuous figures in early American journalism, beginning with editing Charleston's City Gazette . He later published and edited New York's National Advocate and several other newspapers. In the 1820's Noah broke off his relationship with the powerful New York political machine of the Tammany Society and used his skill as a writer and editor to oppose them, publishing the New York Enquirer from 1826 to 1829.

Noah felt that his appointment to an important governmental position would be a way to openly face the challenge that American freedom presented. As he wrote to Secretary of State James Monroe in 1811, his appointment to a consulship would "prove to foreign powers that our government is not regulated in the appointment of their officers by religious distinction." At the age of 26, Noah wrote forceful editorials in Charleston's Gazette advocating the war of 1812. The result of these editorials, and his letters to the government requesting a post, was his appointment as the U.S. Consul to the Kingdom of Tunis in 1813. Noah's subsequent recall because his religion was, in Secretary of State James Monroe's words, "an obstacle to the exercise of [his consular] function" caused outrage among Jews and non-Jews alike. Noah's own protests were based as much on his fears for injury to the nation's founding principles as on anything he personally suffered.

Upon his return to the United States in 1816, Noah settled in New York where he lived for the rest of his life and where he was heavily involved in community activities. He served as Sheriff, Judge, and Surveyor of the Port in New York, and resumed his journalism career. Noah was deeply involved in the Tammany organization and New York politics. He served as an Editor of the New York Advocate for seven years 1816-1824. He also was active in general philanthropic pursuits and he helped to found what would become New York University. In 1827, at the age of forty-two, Noah married seventeen-year-old Rebecca Jackson, daughter of Daniel Jackson, a wealthy and influential New York Ashkenazi Jew. The couple had seven children.

Noah played a major role in New York's Jewish community. As a key orator, he delivered major discourses at important communal gatherings, such as the 1818 Consecration of Congregation Shearith Israel's new building. As a representative of Judaism to the non-Jewish community, he used these discourses and his newspapers to publicize various aspects of Jewish religion and history, as well as Jewish concerns and aspirations. He also maintained correspondences with former Presidents Adams and Jefferson on subjects such as religious freedom and Jewish nationhood. He supported educational efforts in the Jewish community, and even proposed formation of a Hebrew College, a strictly Jewish institution where students could get "a thorough scholarship in every branch of study." Noah was also the President of New York's Hebrew Benevolent Society, and, again by using his newspapers to publicize the institution, was able to multiply its funding during his tenure.

During his travels to Europe and the Barbary Coast, the sight of Jews' oppressed conditions had left a profound impression on Noah, and he became focused on the need for Jewish emigration to more hospitable shores. In 1825 he helped purchase a 2,500-acre tract of land on Grand Island in the Niagara River near Buffalo. Here he envisioned a Jewish colony to be called Ararat, which would be a temporary haven where Jews from persecuted countries could safely await restoration to their ancient Holy Land. The project, undertaken in a highly-publicized style, elicited much interest and discussion, but ultimately was a failure, despite a most flamboyant inauguration ceremony in which Noah proclaimed himself a "Judge of Israel". After the major disappointment of Ararat, Noah regarded Palestine as the only possible homeland for Jews, and frequent lectured and wrote about the subject. His 1844 Discourse on the Restoration of the Jews is one of the most well known works on this topic, in which he expressed ideas that preceded the modern Zionists by more than half a century.

Despite suffering a stroke in February 1851, Noah continued working, even dictating answers for the correspondence column of the Times and Messenger . Eventually the stroke proved to be too much for the sixty-six year old who died on March 22 that same year. Noah's funeral was one of the largest in New York's at the time, and was attended by key leaders of the Jewish and general community.

References: Goldberg, Isaac. Major Noah: American-Jewish Pioneer . Jewish Publication Society, (Philadelphia, 1936). Sarna, Jonathan D. Jacksonian Jew: The Two Worlds of Mordecai Noah, Holmes & Meier Publishers, Inc. (New York, 1981) Mordecai Manuel Noah: The First American Jew, Yeshiva University Museum (1987) The Jewish Virtual Library: A division of the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise www.us-israel.org/jsource/biography/MNoah.html