|Traditional portrait of Rambam, and authentic signature of the
Rambam Rambam was born on the fourteenth day of Nissan – the day
before Passover – in the year 1135, in Cordova, Spain. He was a
descendent of a distinguished and scholarly family tracing its
ancestry to Rabbi Yehudah HaNassi, the compiler of the Mishnah,
and even further back to the royal house of King David. At the
conclusion of his Commentary on the Mishnah – the confiscation
of the Oral Tradition of the Torah (tractate Uktzin 3:12),
Rambam enumerates his ancestry eight generations back,
indicating that all were distinguished Dayanim, Rabbis and
scholars. His father served as Dayan – a judge in the Jewish
court of law – of the Jewish community of Cordova and was famous
not only for his vast Torah knowledge, but also for his general
scholarship, especially in mathematics and astronomy. Rabbi
Maimon himself taught his prodigious son Scripture, Talmud, and
every aspect of the Jewish religion and tradition, and provided
him also with a multifacete