Granada to Cordoba

Today we rose and left our hotel in the old city of Granada after enjoying breakfast in our quaint hotel. Very typical of old Granada. We picked up our car and drove first to Malaga on the Costs dal Sol. It was not directly on the route to Cordoba, our destination for the day, but we had reason to make a detour. We needed to visit Jim Lily in hospital.

Jesse and Felisa messaged saying their great uncle was on a tour in Spain and had a fall and ended up in hospital in Malaga. We were able to visit him and his brother Andrew in hospital to show a friendly Aussie face and say hello. They were grateful. We were sorry we couldn’t do more, but we did what we could to cheer them up given the challenges they are facing.

We continued on the journey to Cordoba and arrived about 4.30pm. We are staying in a really nice hotel in the Jewish Quarter (Juderia) called NH Collection.

I went on a quick walk around the neighbourhood and discovered we were right next door to one of only three old synagogues from the medieval period in Spain. There is this one and then two in Toledo, our next destination.

We are also next door to two significant plazas. Maimonides Plaza and Plaza de Tiberia. Both of these plazas commemorate one of Cordoba’s most famous sons - Moses Maimonides, also known as RAMBAM, an acronym for his full name. He is probably the most famous of all Jewish Rabbis. I remember visiting his burial site in Tiberius in the shores of Galilee when I was in Israel. He was a Jewish Philosopher, doctor of medicine, rabbinical scholar and prolific writer. He had to flee Spain because of Jewish persecution during his lifetime, but he is remembered as one of the greatest Sephardic Jewish leaders of all time. Oh yes, he also wrote the Mishnah Torah , the greatest commentary on the Jewish Torah ever written and still studied by Jewish scholars today.

Maimonides has all kind kinds of things named after him in the city, including streets, shops, restaurants, hotels, plazas, museums and so on. Ironic given that all Jews, including Maimonides, were expelled from Spain. So effective was this expulsion that instead of the 30,000 Jews in Cordoba in his days, there are now only 16 Jewish families in this city. Not even enough to keep a synagogue going. The old synagogue is closed for renovations and it is a museum owned by the city, there being not enough Jews to keep a synagogue going.Read more