Blog

Among our favorite ketubahs (ketubot!!) are ours inspired by the great modern master himself… Mark Rothko.

We’re excited to announce a whole new line of our Rothko-inspired Ketubot, with its own gallery now and almost a dozen ketubot influenced by Rothko — in many different colors!

See the complete Rothko Ketubah Gallery Here

By the way, you can see the complete Rothko Ketubah Gallery Here!

In case it still isn’t clear, you can see the complete Rothko Ketubah Gallery Here!!!

Confession: one of my weirder, Jewish interests: the Jews of Sweden. I’ve found their story fascinating for a long time. My favorite fact: the three major newspapers, it seems, were all founded by Jews and now largely run by Jews. Dagens Nyheter‘s editor-in-chief is Peter Wolodarski; Göteborgs-Posten‘s editor-in-chief is Jonathan Falck; and Svenska Dagbladet‘s editor-in-chief is Lena K. Samuelsson. With slightly curious spellings, they sound like half my class at college.

So, good news: we’re working on making a Swedish Ketubah!!! We think it would be wonderful to to support the Swedish couples, plus we want an excuse to dream about going to Sweden Plus all of the circles over the letters look so… exotic!

If anyone is interested in a Swedish Ketubah… just ask! Woo-hoo!

Morgan
Team Ketubah

Greetings from Buenos Aires! Team Ketubah has an arts studio here and we’re constantly going back-and-forth between BA and New York.

And guess what the language of Buenos Aires is? ¡Español!

So, as a happy consequence of being here in Argentina… it’s easy to for us to make Ketubot (ketubahs?!) in Spanish — and we love doing so! The grammar comes naturally to us

Of course, there are a few levels of irony here. Not all of us are Argentine-Jews; some of us are American and Colombian Jews that spend a lot of time in Argentina. Another irony is, most Argentine Jews less tend to prefer more traditional Ketubot — although our modern style is starting to catch on like wildfire!

We were even founded to raise money for the Jewish orphanage of Buenos Aires, Ieladeinu!

We’ve created Ketubot (ketubahs!) in seemingly every language. Slight exaggeration… but not much. In French, in German, even three in Chinese!

And now…. in Spanish, too! We’re now working on two Ketubot in Spanish, one of which is trilingual! Yay!

So, if you’ve been dreaming about a Ketubah in Spanish…. just ask

Morgan
Team Ketubah

Hat Tip!

Our name is as fun and passionate as every member of our team is, as our website is, as we are together about creating amazing Ketubot (“ketubahs” as so many say!) for every one of our couples.

But we get some questions about our name. The most common is, “Huh? Wait, but you are a Ketubah!”.

Oh, we have so many ways to answer this! Where to start!

First: We’re not a Ketubah — we’re a team of artists here in Argentina that that love making ketubot. We’re not a Ketubah, we’re Ketubah-Artists!

Second: What we do make is Ketubot! Yes, they are Ketubot. Yes, our Orthodox Ketubot are valid according to the binding laws of the Halachah. Yes, we’ve reviewed them with hundreds of Rabbis (literally, hundreds now!). So yes, what we do make are Ketubot.

Third: Irony! Irony, irony, irony. Forget buffalo buffalos buffalo; instead, lets irony irony irony, irony irony with irony!

Fourth: Our inspiration for our name was the fantastic piece of art by René Magritte, The Treachery of Images. It’s the piece of art at the top of this post. If you don’t know it, you should; if you do know it, then you probably got the joke as soon as you first saw our name (and then why are you even reading this post?). Magritte’s classic piece is less commonly known by its treacherous name and more commonly know by its inscription, Ceci n’est pas une pipe — a picture of a pipe immediately below it saying that it is not a pipe. Magritte’s classic joke is playing off of the same tensions we are in our first answer above (well, I should say, we are playing off of the same ones he is; he did come first, after all! By quite a margin!): the piece is not a “pipe” but a “piece of art featuring a pipe”, etc.

Fifth: isn’t being self-referential fun?

Due to our fun name, we’re also known by lots of synonyms or variations. Lets list some of them. The most common is “TINAK.” We changed our email addresses from @thisisnotaketubah.com to @tinak.org just because so many people would not be able to spell the domain — do you know how many spellings of “ketubah” there are? (Ketubah, ketuba, katubah, katuba, ktuba, etc!). So we started going by our acronym and it stuck.

The other reason is, our full name is 7 syllables and TINAK is just 2 syllables. And as lowly Argentines, saying 2 syllables is easier than 7!

But lots of people call us by other variations of our name, inserting fun words, such as: “Not just a Ketubah” (That’s my favorite: we’re not just a Ketubah; we’re a whole ketubah experience!!!!), “Not a normal Ketubah”, and often just “Not a Ketubah”. We often call ourselves “Team Ketubah” because we think it sounds fun and cool, too. Especially when we answer the phone (by the way, we’re friendly, call us at 347-627-0022 any time you want to Ketubah-talk!).

But at the end of the day, a word is just a placeholder for a deeper meaning. And, no matter what Wittgenstein tried to convince the world (and he seems to have just been playing one big joke on everyone in the Tractus, don’t you think?), what matters is the reality below the words. We, TINAK, are committed to the awesome reality underneath everything: a Ketubah you will be proud to display in your house the rest of your life; a Ketubah that is museum-quality; a Ketubah that has the perfect and correct wording for you two; a Ketubah that makes all your Ketubah dreams come try. Why not?

-Morgan
Team Ketubah

While doing “market research” online (aka, “wasting time surfing the Interwebs, looking at lots of web wedding web pages”!) we stumbled across True Photography’s page of all photos of the Ketubot from lots of Jewish weddings where they’ve photographed the couple. And we were so shocked and excited to see two of our Ketubot featured! Yay! Thank you True Photography, we heart you!

Hey y’all (do I sound like a southerner… or what?!),

We’re completely fascinated by the Orthodox Jewish Punk Music movement. Very curious article about these guys in the New York Times.

This has completely inspired us to create a punk ketubah. Does anyone want one?

Anyone, anyone? (Said in a Ben Stein, Bueller, Bueller, tone of voice).

We’d be over-the-top excited and overjoyed to make such a unique awesome incredible fun hip modern cool new Ketubah happen. Did I put enough adjectives into that sentence?

We’re bursting at the seams here. Give us an excuse to do this, someone!

And don’t think, mind you, that we have a superficial understanding of punk. It’s not just a few hits from the (early) Ramones (who were Jewish, mind you). Oh no, oh no! You let our fun tone of voice mislead you! If there’s something we know about other than ketubot and art, it is the historiography of contemporary music! We sit here in our arts studio, discoursing endlessly on topics such as, How did Punk evolve into the New Wave in the early 80s? This is a fascinating question that requires endless attention to detail (just like making a good Ketubah!). Take, for example, The Clash. How could the band behind London Calling also be behind Should I Stay or Should I Go? What happened to the Punk Movement? What does this represent about the cultural shift of the early Reagan years? (That transformation is perhaps rivaled only by Jefferson Airplane/Starship’s transformation from the band of White Rabbit to the band of We Built This City.)

But it’s more than that: punk means something to us. It’s about bringing together a smorgasboard full of unyielding energy, that sounds cacophonous — but if you get it, you understand what it means underneath. But do you? Are you sure?

Give us an excuse to create the Punk Ketubah of your dreams. There must be some Jewish punk out there who wants a Ketubah.

(On a separate note, Argentine men seem to only wear Ramones t-shirts. Welcome to life in Argentina!)

-morgan
Team Ketubah

For our commissioned unique ketubot, we always create three sketches before moving ahead to create the final Ketubah.

But many couples ask us, “when we choose a sketch that we love, what’s the difference in the art between the sketch and the final ketubah?”.

In words: the sketch is just a general outline or framework, to show the positions, colors, and elements. But that’s it.

However, since an image speaks 1,000 words, here are some images. Each of these is a sketch we’ve done, and then the corresponding final ketubah.

Following our Friday afternoon tradition, we just put online our latest Ketubah, Today is Your Day. This Ketubah is an Ode to Dr Seuss.

But the best part is to come. Team Ketubah’s very own Autumn wrote the description. This definitely wins the award for the best TINAK description we’ve ever written. Enjoy it yourself:

You ordered the cake,
All your friends will come to town
The plans are almost all finished,
You even have your perfect wedding gown!

So what could be missing? You think with your thinker
A Ketubah of course! And we have just the winner!

This Ketubah is bright and full of flying bafooms,
It even has wild trees, reaching high to the moon

But what you’ll love most,
And what’s better than best
Is that couple in love
That stick out above the rest!

So today is your day
Don’t let your happiness hide
You have found the love of your life
And this Ketubah will show that with pride!

See the Ketubah yourself here!