A preliminary or prefatory introduction to the Morning Service is a section that underscores the rabbinic Jewish concept that prayer (the offering of our lips) is a valid and legitimate surrogate for the animal sacrifices and other offerings no longer possible in the age following the Temple’s destruction. The section begins with the story of the offering by Avraham of his son, Yitsḥaq, emphasizing a lineage founded in self-sacrifice. That reading is followed by a prayer that further humbles anthropocentric self-regard as vain and fleeting, on par with the lives of the creatures slaughtered as surrogates in the Temple service. It then continues with readings of the offerings, first of incense and then of the animals offered daily. A further prayer clearly lays out the rabbinic Jewish case for substituting prayer for animal sacrifice based on Hosea 14:3. Perhaps highlighting this innovation, the entire section concludes with a review of the exegetical tools by which rabbinic Judaism derives normative Jewish law (halakhah) from Torah.