[¹] Notes from a private journal of a visit to Egypt and Palestine, by way of Italy and the Mediterranean. [Not Published.] London:... 1844. (8º. 2 ll. + 410 pp. + folded leaf), p. 249.
From this it is evident that Sir Moses was continuing his efforts under the new circumstances. His correspondence with the Chief Rabbi, Dr. Nathan Marcus Adler (1803–1890) shows that this famous Ecclesiastic was also greatly in sympathy with the idea (Appendix lvi).
At the same time the notion of establishing a Jewish Commonwealth found ardent champions among another section of English-speaking Jews and among Christians of Puritan aspirations in America.
Major Mordecai Manuel Noah was one of the most prominent American Jews. He was Consul of the United States to Morocco from 1813 to 1816. On his return he established the National Advent and afterwards the New York Enquirer, subsequently also a weekly paper, The Times. He was Surveyor of the Port and Sheriff. In 1819 he published a book of his travels in England, France, Spain, and the Barbary States.
His attempt to establish a Jewish city of refuge on Grand Island, near Buffalo, is the one incident in his career that caused some sensation; but there was a great deal more of interest in the Major’s life than that famous episode. It would be a great pity indeed were the rest of his career allowed to pass into oblivion. Major Noah would have deserved to be remembered had he never gone to Buffalo, and there dedicated the City of Ararat in the Episcopal Church. It was on the dedication of the Shearith Israel Synagogue in New York City in 1818, seven years before the Ararat episode, that Noah said: “The Jews will possess themselves once more of Syria, and take their rank among the governments of the earth.” Again, in 1844, nineteen years after Ararat, he delivered a public discourse in New York, in which he expressed to an audience of Christians his firm belief in the Restoration of Israel to the Promised Land. The tenacity with which Noah held to his Jewish nationalistic ideas is all the more remarkable in view of the fact that he was so thoroughly American. His great-great-grandfather, he said in one of the addresses referred to, was buried in the Cemetery at Chatham Square. He himself was a great literary and political personality in New York. It was said that he told the best story, rounded the best sentence and wrote the best play of all his contemporaries. He was one of the most prominent editors of the City. He held, at different times, the offices of Consul-General at Tunis, Sheriff of New York County, Surveyor of the Port, and Judge of the Court of Sessions. “No man of his day had a better claim to the title of ‘American,’ yet all his life he cherished the idea of a Restoration of the Jews to Palestine.”[¹]
[¹] M. M. Noah. The First American Zionist, by Dr. Abraham Lipsky. The Maccabean, New York, December. 1908, p. 231 f.
In 1845 he published a Discourse on the Restoration of the Jews, delivered at the Tabernacle on October 28th and December 2nd, 1844. In the Preface to his book he refers to some Christian supporters of the idea, and says:—
“True, the efforts to evangelize them (the Jews) contrary, as I think, to the manifest predictions of the prophets, continue to be unceasing, yet even in this there is charity and good feeling, which cannot fail to be reciprocally beneficial.” He then quotes the letter of the late President of the United States, Mr. Adams, to which we referred above (see [Chapter IX.]), and draws the attention of the Americans to the idea of Restoration in most forcible and often eloquent language.
Another American, Warder Cresson (1798–1860), United States Consul in Jerusalem, was a great Zionist in his time. He wrote a book[¹] on the subject, in which he says:—
[¹] Jerusalem—the centre and joy of the whole earth.... By Warder Cresson, United States Consul at Jerusalem.... Second Edition. London.... M.DCCC.XLIX., p. 3.