The word “Mahzor,” familiar to most Jews as the term used for the prayer book for the High Holidays, means “cycle.” It can therefore be used to describe a book containing any liturgical cycle. Sometimes the term was also used to describe a text created in codex = book form, as opposed to a traditional Jewish scroll.  

Corfu is an island off the west coast of Greece, near the narrow passage between the Adriatic and Ionian seas. Corfu had a small but vibrant Jewish community from the time of Venetian hegemony (14th century) until the Holocaust. In its time, it served as a refuge for Sephardic Jewish refugees. 

The current pages are from the section of the mahzor that includes the prayers for the holiday of Shavuot, which celebrates the revelation of the Torah. The text in these beautiful frames is, appropriately, the text of the Ten Commandments, the center of that revelation.