Nearly half of this fifteenth-century Sephardic prayer book offers a program of personal devotion beyond the fixed daily liturgy. Its first fifty folios gather biblical passages, poems, and petitions for recitation through the week. These readings gave worshippers a way to extend their prayer through a regular practice of study and supplication. Large headings in Sephardic square script, framed by elaborate red penwork, mark out a weekly rhythm, assigning particular texts to particular days. On the page shown here, decorated panels announce “Tractate Tamid” and “First chapter for Sunday.” The ornament helps readers find their place in the cycle and gives prominence to the day’s devotional reading.

The opening of Mishnah Tamid on folio 16v introduces a vivid account of the daily service in the Jerusalem Temple. The tractate follows the priests as they rise for their duties, tend the altar, prepare the offering, and perform the morning rites. Much of it unfolds as a continuous narrative, with few of the disputes familiar from other parts of the Mishnah. Louis Ginzberg, the JTS Talmud scholar, argued that Tamid was the Mishnah’s oldest tractate, preserving an early account of priestly practice.

Here, that account becomes a devotional reading. In the six-chapter division reflected in this manuscript’s weekly schedule, one chapter was to be recited on each weekday and the entire tractate on Shabbat. Readers thus returned to the Temple service throughout the week, then retraced its full sequence on the Sabbath. Recitation brought the absent sanctuary into the worshipper’s imagination: a written account of sacrifice became a recurring act of devotion. The practice recalls Hosea’s appeal to offer words in place of sacrificial animals: “Let our lips substitute for bulls” (Hosea 14:3).

Gold lettering and ornament in red and blue distinguish opening words throughout the volume. These embellishments give visual weight to texts intended for repeated use. The book’s arrangement joins the public forms of Sephardic worship to the sustained habits of personal piety. After the weekday devotional readings come the liturgies for Shabbat, Rosh Hodesh, Hanukkah, and Purim.