About

HEPMASITE (Hebrew Philosophical Manuscripts as Sites of Engagement) is a five-year ERC research project (2022–2027) led by Dr. Yoav Meyrav at the Institute for Jewish Studies at the University of Hamburg.

By questioning the commonplace approach to philosophical work and authors as entities abstracted from the materiality in which they are embedded, the project reveals the dynamic processes that shaped centuries of philosophical activity—via artefacts written by hand—through human, real world practices of reading, translating, compiling, revising, reacting, glossing, and recreating/reimagining philosophical ideas.

Overturning the hierarchies usually at play and adopting a post-protagonist approach, the project privileges the individual manuscript, exploring it not just as a text-bearing entity, but as the embodiment of the intersection of material and intellectual history. In short, philosophical manuscripts are philosophical things. In this way, the individual manuscript becomes our entry point to the history of Hebrew philosophy, opening new pathways to the discovery and understanding of its narratives, if in fact those exists.

By shifting our approach and developing new, appropriate methodologies, HEPMASITE redefines the history of Jewish philosophy from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance and unravels its hidden histories.