When Kenny and I were in New York a few weeks ago, he had some free time while I was in a work meeting, so he went down to the Lower East Side to check out ketubot. A ketubah is a Jewish marriage contract. A traditional ketubah spells out the rights of the bride, including the fact that the husband must provide her with food, clothing, and “marital relations”. If the husband passes away, she may exchange the ketubah for money from his estate on which to live.
Ketubot may be very simple or may be elaborate pieces of art that couples will display in their homes.
Back in ancient times, the ketubah was a rather progressive development, because it guaranteed a set of rights to a woman. Today, the traditional ketubah text is considered outdated by most, and many people choose to use a more modern egalitarian text — of which there are many.
Quite a few couples today also commission local artists to make their ketubot, incorporating images from their lives or other symbols that are important to them. Kenny and I considered commissioning a ketubah, but when we started thinking about images associated with our relationship the ideas we came up with were strange: the Microsoft logo, the Ramayana (the apartment building in which we both lived, but not at the same time), a rubber frog, a computer? Perhaps if we were more serious individuals we would have come up with something better. :)
But Kenny found a ketubah in the Lower East Side that we both really liked, and we just ordered it. It should look fantastic when it is framed and hung on our bright red living room wall.
