Used to cover the desk on which the Torah is read during the service, this rug shares many elements with the Muslim prayer rugs from which they were probably adapted. The central portal symbolizes the gate to Paradise in both religions. The lamps on prayer rugs may embody the light of Allah, while in a Jewish context they probably represent the eternal light that is hung in the synagogue before the Torah ark. Rabbinical texts from fourteenth-century Spain indicate that congregants there hung Muslim prayer rugs in synagogues, despite their being forbidden.