What is a Ketubah
According to the Jewish tradition, a Ketubah is a contract between a Bride and a Groom with legal rights and obligations.
A Ketubah is a marriage contract that explains the basic material, conjugal and moral responsibilities of the husband to his wife.
From the Talmudic Era, one of the most beautiful and meaningful parts of a Jewish wedding ceremony is the reading of the Ketubah also spelled: Ketuba, Ketubbah, Ketubot, Ketubas . According to Jewish law, "A man may not live with his wife even one single hour without a Ketubah" The Ketubah text, which is written in Aramaic and Hebrew, specifies the obligations of a man to his wife: to provide her with food, clothing, conjugal rights and financial security. The Ketubah stipulates the money the wife would receive should the husband die or if they divorced.
The Orthodox Ketubah text is the most common used today, but lately, even this traditional text has variations should the marriage be with a convert, a widow or a divorcee. Lately the Conservative movement added a clause, the Lieberman Clause, regarding the procedure of obtaining a Get (a Jewish divorce). Some also may include translation in English or other languages. The Reform and the Egalitarian Ketubot (plural for Ketubah) emphasize the equality of man and woman. With the increase of interfaith marriages, one can order an Interfaith Ketubah.
Although Jewish law specifies the wording of the Ketubah, there is no law regarding the illumination, decorating of the border frame, of this document. The market provides us with printed Ketubot, but more and more couples wish to commission a handmade, personalized, illuminated Ketubah. The couple will express their taste and interest, or choose from a large portfolio of Ketubot and archival manuscripts materials.
Together we will work to create a meaningful and beautiful Ketubah, marriage contract, for the beginning of your lives together as husband and wife. For more insight information about the meaning of the Ketubbah please read the following article, (with permission from the writer)
Ketubbah Texts Reveal Clues of Ancient Values
By Eliezer Segal
At most of the Jewish weddings that I have observed in recent years, not much emphasis was placed on the reading of the Ketubbah, the traditional Jewish marriage contract. The prosaic legalisms that make up this contract do not always conform to the mood of sentimental spirituality that we consider appropriate to a wedding ceremony, and they are often mumbled cursorily from a standardized text that is written in an incomprehensible Aramaic dialect.
At the heart of the Ketubbah is the stipulation of monetary amounts to be paid by the husband i n case of divorce. As practical as this matter might be, it is considered an awkward topic to be introducing under the huppah. Usually, the financial obligations are enumerated as a generic number of "pieces of pure silver"--though at Israeli weddings it is still common to mention (and haggle over) units of real currency.
Originally the Ketubbah's chief purpose was to deter the husband from impulsively divorcing his wife. However, since the medieval enactment that prohibits divorcing a woman without her consent, the institution of the Ketubbah has become something of a ritual formality.
Although stereotyped uniformity characterizes the wording of almost all current Ketubbahs, this situation has not always been the case. Ketubbahs produced in other ages and lands demonstrate greater flexibility and creativity in the formulation of the clauses and conditions of the marriage contract.
Indeed, texts of Ketubbahs have been unearthed in just about every important trove of ancient Jewish manuscripts. The earliest known KetubbahKetubbot and other records that were preserved there it is possible to reconstruct a vivid picture of the life of that lost society. dates from 5th-century B.C.E., and is contained in an archive from the island of Elephantine in the Nile, which housed a colony of Jewish mercenaries in the employ of the Persian emperor. From the
Other Ketubbah texts are included among the archeological remnants of Simeon Bar-Kokhba's revolutionary headquarters, including that of the remarkable "Babata, daughter of Simeon," a second-century Jewish woman who left us an invaluable purse full of assorted bills, receipts and other documents. Several marriage-contracts are also included among the tattered fragments of the Cairo Genizah.
Many of these documents reveal surprising departures from the versions that are in widespread use today. The Elephantine Ketubot, for example, include separate clauses to deal with the termination of marriages at the initiative of either the husband or the wife. One such text contains the following stipulation of penalty clauses for the party that asks for the divorce:
If at some time Ananiah should stand up before the assembly and declare: `I reject my wife Jehoshama. She shall not be my wife!' then he is obligated to pay divorce money... And if Jehoshama should reject her husband Ananiah and declare before him `I reject you and will not be your wife!' then she shall be obliged to pay the `divorce money'..."
The prospect of the wife divorcing her husband would be considered impossible by later Jewish law. However, Ketubbah clauses that define the wife's rights to compel the husband to issue a divorce are cited in the Jerusalem Talmud, and were written into most of the "Genizah" Ketuba texts, which emanate from Egypt and the Land of Israel. The wording in those documents bears an uncanny resemblance to the formulas found in the Elephantine contracts, composed 1500 years earlier, and indicate a continuous evolution throughout that time.
In general, the wording of the texts from the Cairo Genizah expresses a different approach towards marriage from the one that characterizes our conventional Ketubbot. The latter speak only from the husband's perspective, as the one who is acquiring a wife and accepting obligations towards her, while the wife passively consents to the terms. The Palestinian tradition, on the other hand, placed an emphasis on the mutuality of the relationship. Thus, t he marriage is referred to not as nissu'in (literally: carrying, taking), but as a shutafut, a partnership, or a b'rit, a covenant. Some Karaite Ketuboth\averah, a companion. In addition to the groom's commitment to "nourish, provide for, honour and esteem," the wife in turn promised to "serve, attend, honour and esteem" her spouse. call the bride a
The study of the Jewish marriage contract thus opens a fascinating windows into the lives and world-views of previous generations.