English: FRAGMENT: Mahzor, ca. 1300-1500. FOUND IN: Robert Parsons, Elizabethae reginae Angliae edictum promulgatum Londini 29. Novemb. anni M.D. XCI. (Rome, 1593); call # T P2563e 1593. Michael Rand, of the Academy for the Hebrew Language in Jerusalem, has identified the fragment seen here is a folio from a mahzor, a Jewish service book used on the high holidays (Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur) and the pilgrimage festivals (Passover, Shavuot, and Sukkot). According to Rand, the folio features a liturgical poem (piyyut) of a type called yotzer. This yotzer was used to celebrate Shavuot (which falls seven weeks after Passover and corresponds to the Christian feast of Pentecost). The yotzer bears the name Shim’on in the acrostic, which has led some scholars to speculate that it was composed by the 10th-century poet Shim’on bar Yitshaq of Mainz. Rand points out that this particular poem was employed in the Ashkenazic, Roman (i.e. Italian), and Romaniote (i.e., Byzantine) prayer rites, and the formal script found here (called “square script”) appears to be Italian.