Ketubah Renaissance

Michael Shapiro is the founder and CEO of Ketubah.com, the world’s leading publisher of artistic Jewish wedding contracts, and a worldwide lecturer on historical and contemporary ketubot. For nearly three decades he has helped shape the development of contemporary ketubah art by guiding both influential and emerging contemporary ketubah artists and by freeing a wider range of artists of the need to master the text themselves. His ketubah publishing innovations include cutting-edge archival quality printing, laser cutting on demand, and an online tool to submit and verify all Hebrew names on the contract. Shalom Sabar is professor emeritus of Jewish art and folklore at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the author of more than 265 publications exploring Jewish art and the material culture of Jewish communities in Europe and the Islamic East, including The Art of the Ketubbah: Marriage Contracts from the Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary.

“Thoughtful, inspiring, ingenious, inventive, playful, profound. . . . Adjectives fail me. Ketubah Renaissance is a gorgeous testament to the creative, aesthetic, and spiritual health of Jewish life in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. The images summon the ‘mazal tovs’ of weddings past, present, and future.”-Anita Diamant, author of twelve books, including The Red Tent and The Jewish Wedding Now “Offers a bird’s-eye view into the fascinating journey of one of Judaism’s oldest forms of visual culture. Through careful selection, ancient and modern patterns emerge in the development of a veritable contemporary Ketubah Renaissance.”-Francesco Spagnolo, curator of the Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life and associate adjunct professor of Music and Jewish Studies at the University of California, Berkeley “This stunning collection of marriage contracts in many media, from paper cuts to fabric, accompanied by an accessible history, is a must-have for anyone who loves Jewish ritual art.”-Jodi Eichler-Levine, Berman Professor of Jewish Civilization at Lehigh University and author of Painted Pomegranates and Needlepoint Rabbis: How Jews Craft Resilience and Create Community “Clear, well organized, and thoroughly researched, Ketubah Renaissance will make an outstanding gift to a couple soon to be married, providing ideas for the text and illustration of their own marriage contract as well as teaching about the history of ketubot. For rabbis, educators, and scholars as well, it’s an exceptional addition to the existing volumes on historical ketubot.”-Dorion Liebgott, editor of Art and Tradition: Treasures of Jewish Life “This comprehensive and accessible introduction to ketubot will aid couples in their ketubah decision-making process.”-Rabbi Michael Strassfeld, coeditor of The Jewish Catalog

• List of IllustrationsList of Ketubah PlatesForeword: The Joyous Art of the Ketubah by Shalom SabarPreface: Between the Ketubah’s Margins and Center by Joanna HomrighausenAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Two Journeys 1. The Ketubah in Israel2. A Landmark Era for the Art Ketubah3. Ketubah Text Transformations and Use at the Wedding Ceremony4. The Script of the Ketubah5. The Art of Ketubah Production6. The Ketubah in the Twenty-First Century7. Gallery of Ketubah Plates Appendix: Common Ketubah SymbolsNotesBibliography