Emma Mordecai (October 6, 1812 – April 8, 1906) was an American educator, diarist, slave owner, outspoken supporter of the Confederacy and the values of the Old South, and active member of the Jewish community in 19th-century Richmond, Virginia.

While some members of her family had converted to Christianity, amidst a climate of antisemitism in the Civil War-era South, Mordecai remained an observant Jew her entire life.

Mordecai's grandfather, Moses, was an Ashkenazi German Jew who married Esther (Elizabeth Hester Whitlock), an English-born convert to Judaism.

[1] Mordecai spent her formative years, ages seven to nineteen, living at the Spring Farm slave plantation near Richmond, Virginia.

[1] During the spring and summer of 1865, slaves owned by Mordecai living in Henrico County began to assert themselves after Richmond was captured by Union forces.