Writ, hand-signed by Mordecai Manuel Noah. New York, 1821. English.
The present writ is printed and filled out in handwriting, instructing that a dozen jurors be gathered for a judicial hearing in New York City Hall. On the back is a notation handwritten by Mordecai Manuel Noah, with the title of "Sheriff" in the State of New York inscribed next to the signature: "The execution of this writ appear by the hand annexed, M. M. Noah, Sheriff".
Elegantly framed, positioned underneath a (later) hand-painted portrait of Mordecai Manuel Noah.

Approx. 32X13 cm. Good condition. Stains. Fold lines. Tears to length of fold lines (reinforced with adhesive tape on verso). Framed and matted, 30X48 cm. Signature faces outward; front side of writ not outwardly visible.

Mordecai Manuel Noah (1785-1851)

American "Visionary of the Jewish State", who campaigned for the establishment of a Jewish state some one hundred years before Theodor Herzl and the founding of the Zionist Movement. Noah was one of the leading Jewish figures and activists of the early 19th century; he served as a US consul and New York State judge and sheriff, and as editor of some of the major journals of his time. Renowned for his attempt to establish a state by the name of "Ararat" on Grand Island, near Buffalo, New York, as a refuge for Jews. His extensive efforts in this regard included correspondence with some of the founding fathers of the United States of America, including Presidents John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison, who expressed to him their support for the Jewish people.
Noah was born in Philadelphia, to a father of German extraction and a mother of Spanish-Portuguese origin and participated in the American Revolutionary War. George Washington is said to have been present at his parents’ wedding. Noah Moved to Charleston, South Carolina, to study law, and joined the Democratic-Republican Party (originally America’s first opposition party, which in Noah’s time developed into the largest and most dominant political party in the US – the eventual forerunner to the Democratic Party). In 1811, Noah submitted his candidacy for the position of US Consul, and was subsequently appointed by Secretary of State James Monroe (later to become the Fifth President of the United States) to serve first as Consul in Riga (then part of Imperial Russia; this appointment was declined by Noah) and finally, in 1813, to the Kingdom of Tunis. His diplomatic function in Tunis brought him into contact for the first time with non-American Jews; as a result, he personally witnessed the oppression, persecution, and discrimination suffered by his fellow Jews, and was profoundly influenced by what he saw and learned.
In Tunis, Noah succeeded in securing the freedom of American citizens sold into slavery, but the ransom he paid for this was higher than the amount authorized by the US government. In his own defense, he argued that he was obligated to do so as a Jew, to fulfill the "mitzvah" of "pidyon shvuyim" ("release of captives"). But in response, Monroe sent him a sharply worded letter of dismissal, which he justified with what appeared to be clearly anti-Jewish arguments.
The evidently antisemitic tone of the letter of dismissal – in addition to the dramatic scenes he experienced in his encounters with Jewish communities in the course of his diplomatic duties – led to a drastic change in Noah’s worldview. Upon his return to the US, he began to devise new ideas for relieving the suffering of Jews around the world, and these ideas eventually led him to envision the concept of an autonomous Jewish territory, where Jews could find refuge from persecutions. Consequently, he began to negotiate the purchase of Grand Island. He invested his own resources in purchasing one third of the land on the island and planned to solicit donations to acquire the remainder of lands there. In September 1825, he conducted a rather pompous cornerstone-laying ceremony, attended by hundreds of invited guests, and used the occasion to proclaim the founding of "Ararat" – named after the safe-haven mountaintop upon which the biblical Noah’s Ark was said to have landed – as a place of refuge for Jews.
The proclamation of the establishment of a "State for the Jews" was widely dismissed as a recklessly futile act, and Noah was harshly mocked and ridiculed by most of his contemporaries. The "Niles’ Weekly Register" published a number of articles regarding the founding of Ararat and reported at length on the various pronouncements made by Noah and his appeal to the Jews of the world, which the publishers clearly viewed as eccentric and laughable. These pronouncements included Noah’s declaration of Ararat as a place of refuge for Jews wherever they may be; appointing himself as the "governor and judge" of the Children of Israel; his call to the Jews of the world to enlist and take part in the campaign under his leadership; his publication of a list of laws and instructions aimed at the entire Jewish people; his plea to rabbis and Jewish community leaders around the world to recognize Ararat; an order to conduct a worldwide census of all Jews everywhere; an impassioned appeal to Jews serving in imperial armies everywhere to outwardly demonstrate their loyalty to their respective armies; an announcement regarding the donation of gifts to "his holy brethren" in Jerusalem; a call to permanently abolish polygamy and prohibit the marriage of any couple in which one of the two partners is illiterate; a call for the reciting of particular prayers; an order to grant equal privileges to the "Black Jews" of India and Africa; a declaration that Native Americans are descendants of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel; and so on and so forth.
Notwithstanding all of Noah’s bold pronouncements, his plans for Ararat were largely ignored by the Jews of the world, and many of his fellow Jews scoffed at him, calling him a charlatan, or simply insane. (To be fair, the publication of Theodor Herzl’s book "Der Judenstaat" in 1896 was initially greeted similarly.) Noah had no choice but to abandon the idea of Ararat and instead began advancing a new idea, namely the establishment of a Jewish state in the Holy Land. He persistently adhered to the latter idea till the day he died, in 1851.
According to the historian Bernard Dov Weinryb, Mordecai Manuel Noah can be regarded as the "earliest proclaimer" of modern Zionism (see: Bernard Dov Weinryb, "Yesodot HaZionut VeToldotehah" ("Foundations and Development of Zionism"), in: "Tarbitz", Vol. 8, Booklet A, The Mandel Institute of Jewish Studies, Jerusalem, Tishrei 1936, Hebrew, pp. 69-112.