Mordecai Manuel Noah was an American sheriff, playwright, diplomat, journalist, and utopian. He was born in a family of mixed Ashkenazi and Portuguese Sephardic ancestry and was the grandson of Jonas Phillips. He was the most important Jewish lay leader in New York in the early 19th century, and the first Jew born in the United States to reach national prominence. He is best known for envisioning a homeland for the Jewish People in Upstate New York, named "Ararat". Long taken by the idea of a Jewish territorial restoration, Noah, in 1825, helped purchase a tract of land on Grand Island in the Niagara River near Buffalo, which he named Ararat and envisioned as a Jewish colony. Though the proposal elicited much discussion, the attempt was not a success and Noah’s pretensions as ruler were ridiculed. After the failure of the Ararat experience, Noah turned more strongly to the idea of Palestine as a national home for Jews. As the best-known American Jew of his time, Noah in 1840 delivered the principal address at a meeting at B’nai Jeshurun in New York protesting the Damascus Affair.

Grand Island is an island town in Erie County, New York, United States. As of the 2020 census, the town's population was 21,389 representing an increase of 5.00% from the 2010 census figure. The town's name is derived from the French name La Grande Île; Grand Island is the largest island in the Niagara River and the third largest in New York state. The phrase La Grande Île appears on the town seal.