The novel takes place in 1830, and its primary plot thread concerns the production of a play, also called The Jew of New York, that satirizes a real-life historical figure, Mordecai Manuel Noah. For the strip's original serialization in the Forward, Katchor provided an introductory caption that set the story's historical background. The caption explained that Mordecai Manuel Noah had "acquired Grand Island, in the Niagara River, near Buffalo" and "proclaimed himself governor and judge of Israel and called for the ingathering of all Jews, including the Karaites, Samaritans, American Indians and other lost tribes of Israel. He called his 'City of Refuge' Ararat. Nothing came of this grandiose scheme. The Jews remained scattered, Noah went on to become a literary and political lion of New York, and there our story begins" (quoted Weschler 238). This description is historically accurate; I would add that the now-obscure Noah has been deemed by historians to be "probably the most prominent and influential Jew in the United States in the early nineteenth century" (Reinharz and Mendes-Flohr).

The historical Noah's hubris is evident not only in his self-declared status as a "Governor and Judge of Israel" (adopting biblical terminology) but also in his choice of a name for the new Jewish homeland: his biblical namesake landed the ark on Mount Ararat, so the American Noah dubbed his would-be homeland Ararat. Noah's literal interpretation of his own name provides sanction, not to say precedent, for the literalized naming of characters throughout The Jew of New York Noah's name gets more sarcastic treatment in the play The Jew of New York, where his onstage counterpart is named Major Ham. This name, like Ararat, invokes the biblical Noah (one of whose sons was Ham), but it also insults the American Noah's Jewish faith with its prohibition on eating pork (not to mention the scandal of Ham himself).  continue...