Maria Diemling

Bio: Maria Diemling is an academic researcher from Canterbury Christ Church University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Judaism & Jewish identity. The author has an hindex of 4, co-authored 11 publications receiving 43 citations.

Arendt’s ‘conscious pariah’ and the ambiguous figure of the subaltern:

Abstract: Hannah Arendt’s Jewish writings were central to her thinking about the human condition and engaged with the dialectics of modernity, universalism and identity. Her concept of the ‘conscious pariah’ attempted both to define a role for the public intellectual and understand the relationship between Jews and modernity. Controversially she accused Jewish victims of lack of resistance to the Nazis and argued that their victimization resulted from apolitical ‘worldlessness’. We argue that although Arendt’s analysis was original and challenging, her characterization of Jewish history as one of ‘powerlessness’ is exaggerated but, more importantly, her underdeveloped concept of ‘the social’ is insensitive to the complex modalities of resistance and consciousness among subaltern Jewish communities. Furthermore, her lack of interest in religious observance obscures the importance of Judaism as a resource for resistance. This is illustrated by the ‘hidden transcripts’ of Jewish resistance from the early modern period.

The politics of food: kashrut, food choices and social justice (tikkun olam)

Abstract: Engagement in social justice (tikkun olam) has in recent decades become an important focus across all major Jewish denominations. This article explores how notions of tikkun olam inform the food choices of an increasing number of contemporary Jews and how these can be understood as innovative forms of consumptive practices that shape Jewish identity beyond the traditional dietary laws (kashrut). Examining halakhic responses to animal cruelty in the production of meat, vegetarianism and new initiatives that promote certification for ‘ethical kashrut’, I argue that, despite internal criticism, these practices can give Jewish consumers responsibility for the ethical production of food but also some control in a highly industrialised process that has led to alienation between the production and consumption of food.

The Ethnographer and the Jewish Body: Johann Jacob Schudt on the Civilisation Process of the Jews of Frankfurt

Abstract: Johann Jacob Schudt's ethnographic work Judische Merckwurdigkeiten has been described as a turning point in anti-Jewish polemical discourse because of its use of secular arguments. This article examines how Schudt writes about the body of Jews by focusing on notions of cleanliness and pollution. I argue that Schudt, struggling to reconcile his scholarly ambitions with his devout Lutheranism, rejects traditional polemical arguments about the Jewish body based on theological assumptions and judges the physical appearance according to social and cultural norms and expectations of early modern Protestant society. However, Schudt does remain committed to his religious convictions when he suggests that true civilisation can only be found in Christianity. In order to turn into proper members of society, Jews not only have to change their hygiene but also their religion.

The Jewish body: corporeality, society, and identity in the Renaissance and early modern period

Abstract: CONTENTS Introduction PART 1 THE BODY IN HISTORICAL AND SOCIAL CONTEXT The Rise of the Body in Early Modern Jewish Society: The Italian Case Study Roni Weinstein Jewish 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 Ba'alei Shem, Doctors and Patients among German Jews in the Eighteenth Century Nimrod Zinger PART II THE HALAKHIC BODY "La'avodat Bor'o": The Body in the Shul.han Arukh of R. Joseph Caro Jeffrey R. Woolf Virginity: Women's Body as a State of Mind: Destiny Becomes Biology Howard Tzvi Adelman Mental and Bodily Malfunctioning in Marriage: Evidence from Sixteenth- and Early Seventeenth-Century Responsa from the Ottoman Empire and Poland Ruth Berger PART III BODY, MIND AND SOUL On the Performing Body in Theosophical-Theurgical Kabbalah: Some Preliminary Remarks Moshe Idel Giving Birth to the Hebrew Author: Two Compositions by Johanan Alemanno Arthur M. Lesley The Idea of Beauty in Leone Ebreo (Judah Abravanel) Sergius Kodera Body of Conversion and the Immortality of the Soul: The "Beautiful Jewess" Sara Copio Sullam Giuseppe Veltri PART IV THE BODY IN JEWISH-CHRISTIAN DISCOURSE Shaping the Body of the Godhead: The Adaptation of the Androgynous Motif in Early Christian Kabbalah Saverio Campanini The Human Body as a Musical Instrument in the Sermons of Judah Moscato Gianfranco Miletto Angelic Embodiment and the Feminine Representation of Jesus: Reconstructing Carnality in the Christian Kabbalah of Johann Kemper Elliot R. Wolfson "Adonai con voi" (1569), a Simple Popular Song with a Complicated Semantic about (what seems to be) Circumcision Don Harran

The Jewish Body

Abstract: This volume explores perceptions of the "Jewish body" in variety of early modern Jewish sources. It discusses, among other topics, ideas of the ideal body in normative sources, the influence of Kabbalistic ideas on Jewish-Christian discourse and the link between melancholy and exile.

The Human Condition.

Abstract: Human beings are described by many spiritual traditions as ‘blind’ or ‘asleep’ or ‘in a dream.’ These terms refers to the limited attenuated state of consciousness of most human beings caught up in patterns of conditioned thought, feeling and perception, which prevent the development of our latent, higher spiritual possibilities. In the words of Idries Shah: “Man, like a sleepwalker who suddenly ‘comes to’ on some lonely road has in general no correct idea as to his origins or his destiny.” In some religious traditions, such as Christianity and Islam, the myth of the ‘Fall from the Garden of Eden’ symbolizes the loss of the primordial state through the veiling of higher consciousness. Other traditions use similar metaphors to describe the spiritual condition of humanity:

Flesh and Stone: The Body and the City in Western Civilization.

Abstract: Introduction - body and city: the passive body the plan of the book a personal note. Part 1 Powers of the voice and eye: nakedness - the citizen's body in Perikles' Athens the cloak of darkness - the protections of ritual in Athens the obsessive image - place and time in Hadrian's Rome time in the body - early Christians in Rome. Part 2 Movements of the heart: comunity - the Paris of Jehan de Chelles \"each man is a devil to himself\" - the paris of Humbert de Romans fear of touching - the Jewish ghetto in Renaissance Venice. Part 3 Arteries and veins: moving bodies - Harvey's revolution the body set free - Boullee's Paris urban individualism - E.M. Forster's London. Conclusion: civic bodies - multi-cultural New York.

Communicating Vessels Ecclesiastic Centralisation, Religious Diversity and Knowledge in Medieval Latin Europe

Abstract: The objective of this article is to analyse several ways of handling religious diversity that were practised in medieval Latin Christian Europe, paying particular attention to the interdependencies...

Religion as a Macro Social Force Affecting Business: Concepts, Questions, and Future Research

Abstract: Religion has been in general neglected or even seen as a taboo subject in organizational research and management practice. This is a glaring omission in the business and society and business ethics...