11/21/2022
The city of Buffalo, New York was buried under record snowfall this past week, with some areas receiving more than 6 feet of snow. The first Jew known to reside in the Buffalo area was Captain Mordecai Myers, who was stationed at the Williamsville cantonment during the War of 1812. The Jewish population grew through the 1800’s, with the first synagogue established in 1847. There are presently more than a dozen synagogues serving the Jewish population of approximately 12,000. The most famous member of the Jewish community was Mordecai Manuel Noah, who purchased land at Grand Island in the Niagara River to establish a Jewish homeland, one of the earliest Zionist endeavors. On September 2, 1825, Noah led a procession of Masons, militia members, municipal leaders, Seneca Chief Red Jacket, thousands of Christians, and a few Jews, to a ceremony at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church where he presented a cornerstone declaring “ARARAT, A City of Refuge for the Jews, Founded by Mordecai Manuel Noah in the month of Tizri 5586, Sept. 1825 and in the 50th Year of American Independence.” Noah called on every Jew in the world to be taxed “three sheckels of silver” to support the government of the Jewish Nation. His plan failed to attract any interest in the Jewish world, however, and the cornerstone now sits in the Buffalo Historical Society. Noah went on to great success in a very varied career–he served as a sheriff in New York, was a founder of New York University, wrote plays, was behind the establishment of New York’s Mt. Sinai Hospital, published the Sunday Times and other newspapers, was a leader of the Tammany Hall political machine, and more. What else is Mordecai Manuel Noah known for?
Mordecai Manuel Noah is in the public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
A. Noah was one of the founders, in 1845, of Temple Emanu-El on the Lower East Side of New York. Though Noah was not an ordained rabbi, he served as the congregation’s religious leader for its first 5 years until the congregation expanded and hired its first rabbi, Leo Merzbacher, in 1850.
B. Noah was a prominent abolitionist, saying of slavery, “How can Americans be engaged in this traffic [the slave trade], men whose birthright is liberty, whose eminent peculiarity is freedom?”
C. Noah wrote a book entitled Ararat and the Jewish Enterprise, where he continued to advocate for a Jewish homeland despite the failure of his efforts on the island near Buffalo. His book was a primary inspiration to Theodor Herzl, who spoke about it in great detail at the First Zionist Congress in Basel in 1897.
D. Noah wrote critical reviews of the plays and performers at New York’s African Grove Theatre, a theater whose company and crew were all Black. Noah demeaned the actors in racist terms and questioned their intelligence, as evidenced by the following quote: “People of colour generally are very imitative, quick in their conceptions and rapid in execution; but it is in the lighter pursuits requiring no intensity of thought or depth of reflection.”
E. Noah established the first kosher slaughterhouse in Buffalo, which specialized in the kosher slaughtering of buffalo, and he owned a kosher deli specializing in kosher Buffalo wings.
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