author
M. M. (Mordecai Manuel) Noah
1785–1851
A lively figure in early American public life, he moved between journalism, diplomacy, politics, and the stage. He is especially remembered for his bold 1825 plan to found a Jewish refuge called Ararat on Grand Island, New York.
1 Audiobook
She Would Be a Soldier; Or, The Plains of Chippewa
by M. M. (Mordecai Manuel) Noah
About the author
Born in Philadelphia in 1785 and later active in New York, Mordecai Manuel Noah built an unusually varied career as a journalist, playwright, diplomat, and public official. He served as U.S. consul to Tunis, edited newspapers, and became one of the most visible Jewish figures in the United States during the early 19th century.
Noah wrote for the theater as well as the press, and his public life often mixed politics, culture, and advocacy. He is most often linked to his proposal for Ararat, a planned Jewish refuge on Grand Island near Buffalo in 1825. Although the project did not succeed, it became one of the most striking early expressions of Jewish political imagination in America.
He died in New York in 1851. Today, he is remembered as an energetic and sometimes controversial voice in American Jewish history, notable both for his literary work and for the ambition of his civic and political ideas.