Off to America and Back Again, or Judah Touro and Other Products of the German Jewish Imagination

This article explores the function that visions of America played in nineteenth-century German Jewish culture. Particularly in the decades surrounding the granting of complete emancipation in the German Empire in 1871, Jewish life in the United States proved especially fascinating to German Jewish writers. Looking at a variety of travelogues and fictional texts produced by Jews for Jews in the German-speaking world during this period, this article illustrates how representations of American Jewish life could be used to mediate knowledge about the New World while underscoring the leading role that German Jewry reserved for itself at home.