There are acts of vandalism that damage property, and then there are acts that reveal history has never really ended. The recent defacement of the statue of Maimonides in Córdoba, Spain, with a swastika is one of those moments. It is tempting to see it as just another antisemitic incident. It is not.

A swastika on the statue of Maimonides is an attack on eight centuries of Jewish history. It collapses the Spanish Inquisition and the Holocaust into a single image. It reminds us that the forces that once sought to expel Jews from Spain and later sought to exterminate them in Europe were animated by the same enduring idea: that Jews do not belong. Which raises a question. Why Maimonides?

Maimonides was born in Córdoba in 1138. He is remembered as one of Judaism’s greatest legal authorities and philosophers, the author of the Mishneh Torah and Guide for the Perplexed, and a physician whose influence extended far beyond the Jewish world. His writings shaped Jewish law, influenced Christian theologians, and were studied by Muslim scholars. Few figures better embody the idea that knowledge can transcend religious boundaries.

His statue is not merely a monument to a Jewish thinker, it is a monument to one of Spain’s greatest sons. And it is a monument to a civilization.

For centuries, Jews helped shape Spanish life through scholarship, medicine, philosophy, commerce, diplomacy, poetry, law, and science. Córdoba was one of the great intellectual capitals of medieval Europe. Jewish thinkers translated classical texts, advised kings and caliphs, pioneered medicine, composed enduring poetry, and helped make the Iberian Peninsula one of the intellectual centers of its age.

Then, in 1492, that world was shattered. The Alhambra Decree........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)