  Shem-Tov ben Joseph ibn Falaquera (ca. 1225–1295), sometime poet and Jewish philosopher, is generally overlooked in histories of Jewish philosophy and is not well known even by students in the field; yet few medieval Jewish philosophers matched his learning and knowledge of the writings of the ancient Greek and medieval Islamic and Jewish philosophers. Falaquera’s primary goal seems to have been to interest and educate his co-religionists in philosophy and science, both for its own sake and for the sake of understanding Scripture properly. In so doing, he made important contributions to the history of Jewish philosophy.