Jewish Body

Maria Diemling, Dr. Phil. (1999) in History, University of Vienna, is Senior Lecturer in Religious Studies at Canterbury Christ Church University, Kent, United Kingdom. She has published on Jewish-Christian relations in the Early Modern Period with a particular interest in conversions and images of the body.Giuseppe Veltri, PhD. (1991), Free University of Berlin is professor of Jewish Studies at the University of Halle (Germany) and Director of the Zunz Centre. He has published on Jewish hermeneutics, philosophy, magic, folklore, Renaissance studies including Eine Tora für den König Talmai (1994), Magie und Halakha (1997), Gegenwart der Tradition (2002), Cultural Intermediaries (2004 with David Ruderman), Library, Translations, and "Canonic" Texts (2006).

• CONTENTSIntroductionPART 1 THE BODY IN HISTORICAL AND SOCIAL CONTEXTThe Rise of the Body in Early Modern Jewish Society: The Italian Case Study Roni WeinsteinJewish Bodies and Renaissance Melancholy: Culture and the City in Italy and the Ottoman Empire Eleazar Gutwirth“Den ikh bin treyfe gevezn”: Body Perceptions in Seventeenth-Century Jewish Autobiographical Texts Maria Diemling“Who Knows What the Cause Is?”: “Natural” and “Unnatural” Causes for Illness in the Writings of Baʻalei Shem, Doctors and Patients among German Jews in the Eighteenth Century Nimrod ZingerPART II THE HALAKHIC BODY“Laʻavodat Bor’o”: The Body in the Shul.han Arukh of R. Joseph Caro Jeffrey R. WoolfVirginity: Women’s Body as a State of Mind: Destiny Becomes Biology Howard Tzvi AdelmanMental and Bodily Malfunctioning in Marriage: Evidence from Sixteenth- and Early Seventeenth-Century Responsa from the Ottoman Empire and Poland Ruth BergerPART III BODY, MIND AND SOULOn the Performing Body in Theosophical-Theurgical Kabbalah: Some Preliminary RemarksMoshe IdelGiving Birth to the Hebrew Author: Two Compositions by Johanan Alemanno Arthur M. LesleyThe Idea of Beauty in Leone Ebreo (Judah Abravanel) Sergius KoderaBody of Conversion and the Immortality of the Soul: The “Beautiful Jewess” Sara Copio Sullam Giuseppe VeltriPART IV THE BODY IN JEWISH-CHRISTIAN DISCOURSEShaping the Body of the Godhead: The Adaptation of the Androgynous Motif in Early Christian KabbalahSaverio CampaniniThe Human Body as a Musical Instrument in the Sermons of Judah Moscato Gianfranco MilettoAngelic Embodiment and the Feminine Representation of Jesus: Reconstructing Carnality in the Christian Kabbalah of Johann KemperElliot R. Wolfson“Adonai con voi” (1569), a Simple Popular Song with a Complicated Semantic about (what seems to be) Circumcision Don Harrán

"Maria Diemling and Giuseppe Veltri have assembled an accomplished group of scholars and collected an important store of articles concerning physicality in early modern Jewish culture. Its contents are broad enough to appeal to a wide readership of scholars and students in gender studies, cultural history, intellectual history, anthropology, religious studies, Kabbalah — even the history of music and art. In spite of this considerable topical and thematic diversity the book avoids losing focus; in one way or another each contribution responds to Diemling and Veltri’s organizing question: how did early modern Jews react to the period’s increased emphasis on and interest in corporeality?" - Andrew Berns, University of Pennsylvania, in: Renaissance Quarterly 63.1 (2010)