About

HEPMASITE (“Hebrew Philosophical Manuscripts as Sites of Engagement”) is a 5-year research project headed by Dr. Yoav Meyrav. This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No 101041376). The project will begin in October 2022.

HEPMASITE will tackle the corpus of medieval Hebrew philosophical manuscripts in order to unravel the hidden history of Jewish philosophy enveloped within them. It aims to reconceptualize the understanding of Jewish philosophy as it took place in the real world and as it was studied by actual people.

HEPMASITE intends to fill the gap between two extremes: On the one hand, Hebrew manuscripts are incredibly well-documented, and in recent years, thanks to massive digitization projects, are accessible as never before. This opens opportunities for research that were until now nearly impossible. On the other hand, Hebrew manuscripts are largely private (rather than institutionalized) endeavours that display considerable individuality, idiosyncrasy, and facing the unknown. They exhibit exceptionally high levels of anonymity, they are extremely diverse, and contain lots of annotations, comments, glosses, and so forth.

This complex and uncertain state of events doubtless causes many problems, but it also offers a huge opportunity for studying philosophy as it was practiced in the real world. Retaining the particularity of Hebrew manuscripts also retains an essential component of the Hebrew philosophical narrative. With so many players unknown, the individual copy becomes our main point of entry to its history. Hence, rather than treating manuscripts as containers of text to be used to produce critical editions, research conducted within the context of HEMPASITE will always stay on the manuscript level.

HEPMASITE will operate according to three theoretical premises, each with its own method.

1.      Hebrew philosophical manuscripts are philosophical things and should therefore be studied as individuals by producing case studies.

2.      In the Hebrew tradition, copying a work is not distinct from the act of philosophizing. If we study all the manuscripts of a certain work together, we can come up with its story. This is what the project refers to as “narrative philology.”

3.      An entire hidden history can be unearthed by analysing what happens between the lines and on the margins. To this end, the project will produce a repository of marginalia that will map the ways in which scholars engaged with the ideas they encountered.

For more information on the project, please contact Dr. Yoav Meyrav(yoav.meyrav"AT"uni-hamburg.de).