Mordechai Immanuel Noah
Mordechai Immanuel Noah (also Mordechai Manuel Noah or Mordecai Manuel Noah ; born July 19, 1785 in Philadelphia , Pennsylvania , † March 22, 1851 in New York ) was an American Jewish journalist , publicist , diplomat and philanthropist .
Life
Mordechai Immanuel Noah came from a respected but impoverished Portuguese Marran family who had fled from Lisbon to London and emigrated to America from there. He initially worked as a journalist. As editor of the City Gazette in Charleston, South Carolina , he was a supporter of the war against England . President Madison made him consul and representative of the American government in Riga in 1811 and consul in Tunis in 1813 . Entrusted with a special mission in Algiers , Noah had the opportunity to declare that the United States definitely did not consider itself a Christian state - this declaration and decision has remained unchanged since then. In 1822, Noah became a High Sheriff and New York Harbor Inspector.
Mordechai Immanuel Noah became significant for the prehistory of Zionism in 1825 through his call to world Jewry to come to Ararat , an island he bought in the Niagara River in New York State , and to settle there until the final repossession of Palestine will be possible - a project that he had pursued since 1818, motivated by the oppressive situation of the Jews in Russia and Africa. On September 15, 1825, the symbolic laying of the foundation stone took place in the St. Paul's Church in Buffalo with the thunder of cannons and the participation of state dignitaries, representatives of the Christian clergy, the Freemasons and the Indians. Noah proclaimed himself "judge and ruler in Israel" and issued a proclamation in which he proclaimed the "foundation of the Jewish empire in the land of the Great Lakes until the reestablishment of the Jewish empire in Palestine".
The planned city was not built, however, as a result, Noah received a lot of rejection and ridicule. Today only the foundation stone, which is presented in the historical museum in Buffalo and bears the inscription: "Ararat. A city of Refuge for the Jews. Founded by Mordecai Manuel Noah, in the Month Tizri 5586, Sept. 1825", reminds of the whole project , in the 49th year of American Independence "(prefixed in Hebrew is the Shema Yisrael ).
In later years Mordechai Immanuel Noah formulated an urgent appeal to the Christian world (published in book form in New York in 1844: Discourse on the Restoration of the Jews ) to help the Jews regain Palestine.
Literature (selection)
- Jost , Modern History of the Jews , 1847, Vol. II, 227–235
- GA Kohut, A Literary Autobiography of MM Noah , 1897
- AB Makower, MM Noah. His Life and Work , 1917
- Dubnow , Weltgeschichte des Jüdischen Volks , 1925 ff., Vol. 11, pp. 301 f.
- Selig Adler, Thomas E. Connolly, From Ararat to Suburbia: the History of the Jewish Community of Buffalo , Philadelphia 1960
- Ben Katchor , The Jew of New York , 1998 (implementation as graphic novel )
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Mordechai Immanuel Noah in the Jewish Virtual Library, accessed July 26, 2012
- ↑ John F. Oppenheimer (Red.) And a .: Lexicon of Judaism. 2nd Edition. Bertelsmann Lexikon Verlag, Gütersloh u. a. 1971, ISBN 3-570-05964-2 , col. 588.
- ↑ Michael Brenner: Small Jewish History , CH Beck, 1st edition, Munich, 2012, ISBN 978-3-406-62124-6 , p. 193
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Noah, Mordechai Immanuel |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American-Jewish journalist, publicist, diplomat, and philanthropist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | July 19, 1785 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Philadelphia , Pennsylvania |
| DATE OF DEATH | March 22, 1851 |
| Place of death | New York City |