Zion on Grand Island: America’s Almost Jewish Homeland

In this episode, we follow a strange line from Lydia Maria Child's The American Frugal Housewife into one of the oddest and most fascinating episodes in early American religious history. Mordechai Manuel Noah, one of the most prominent Jewish Americans of the early 19th century, imagined Grand Island in the Niagara River as Ararat, a city of refuge for the Jewish people. The plan failed almost…