Tola'at Ya'akov — The Worm of Jacob (1507)

A Kabbalistic commentary on the prayers — the Amidah, the Sabbath, the festivals — taking the liturgy phrase by phrase and showing what each one is understood to accomplish above. Widely printed, and one of the works through which Zoharic prayer-mysticism reached ordinary worshippers.

Its title is Isaiah's worm, and the choice is deliberate: the book is about a creature with no strength whose mouth reaches all the way up.

This is the room's epigraph, and it settles a question before it is asked. Worm → mouth → the thing the mouth can do → prayer is not a modern chain of associations assembled for an app. It is a book, with a date, and the date is 1507.