'Our forefathers did not tell us': Jews and natural philosophy in Rudolfine Prague

In the 16th century, Jews of central Europe began to take a keen interest in natural philosophy and the occult. The center of this interest was Prague during the reign of Rudolf II, a city home to a multiplicity of orthodoxies, and sometimes outright heterodoxy. Many of the extraordinary natural philosophers there (including Johannes Kepler and Tycho Brahe) shared a persuasion that their scholarly efforts might help reconcile fragmented post-Reformation Europe. This 'irenic' impulse appealed to some Jewish intellectuals, and spurred their interest in natural philosophy. Natural philosophy, some Jews hoped, might be pursued peaceably by scholars of different religions.