Mordecai Manuel Noah

Mordecai Manuel Noah (also Mordechai Emanuel Noah) (1785-1851) was the first American proto-Zionist, as well as being an author, playwright, journalist and political figure. Noah is best known however for his scheme of settling the Jews in Grand Island, on the Niagara river near Buffalo New York. It is not generally realized that this tiny "Jewish Homeland" was to have been only a temporary refuge, and that Noah asserted that Jews would never give up their claim on Zion.

Mordecai Manuel Noah was born in Philadelphia on July 19, 1785. His parents were Manuel M. Noah, a Revolutionary War hero and Zipporah Phillips, of Portuguese Sephardic Jewish extraction. Zipporah Noah was a great, great granddaughter of Dr. Samuel Nunez, a Marrano (forcible convert) who made a daring escape from the Portuguese inquisition and settled in Savannah, Georgia in 1732.  Mordechai's mother died in 1795 (or 1792 according to other sources). He was raised  by his maternal  grandfather Jonas Phillips,  who had immigrated from Prussia to London and thence, after learning English, in Charleston, South Carolina in 1756. His stepmother was Rebecca (Machado) Phillips. The Phillips had 21 other children. His grandfather gave  him with a deep-seated reverence for American liberty, and with an equally staunch pride in his people and religion.

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