Seder Tikkun Hatzot (Kabbalistic Midnight Vigil), Scribe: Elijah Moses Meystre, Casale Monferrato: 5555 (1795)

18 leaves (5 3/8 x 3 7/8 in.; 137 x 99 mm). 

Elliott Horowitz, “Coffee, Coffeehouses, and the Nocturnal Rituals of Early Modern Jewry,” AJS Review 14,1 (Spring 1989): 17-46.

This beautifully written, small-format copy of Seder Tikkun Hatzot, includes biblical texts from Psalms and Lamentations, as well as kinot (dirges) to be recited as part of the midnight liturgy which mourns the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. This ritual originated in the Middle Ages among pious Jews but began to be more prevalent in the wake of the widespread dissemination of Lurianic Kabbalah, starting in the second half of the sixteenth century. Some scholars attribute at least part of the rite's sudden burst of popularity to the markedly increased consumption of coffee at around the same time. In Italy, where coffee only arrived in the mid-seventeenth century, the ritual was relatively slow in overtaking the earlier practice of reciting similar texts before daybreak (as part of so-called Shomerim la-Boker societies). By the middle of the eighteenth century, however, it had, in some Italian cities, considerably displaced or outstripped the pre-dawn ritual.