Wow, we just sent our first Ketubah to Hawaii! Yay! Honolulu, here come our Ketubahs!!!

It’s so exciting to see our Ketubot go all around the country, and world!

I’ll confess… I didn’t even know there were Jews in Hawaii. Who would’ve thunk?!

Okay, back now to watching Princesses: Long Island! ;)

-Morgan
Team Ketubah

Some Ketubah artists like signing their ketubot. It makes you feel good: you create a great work of art, and your name is there, permanently, in the corner, for them to see every day!

We don’t do that (although we offer optionally, certificates of authenticity).

Let me explain our thinking.

We’ve created more than 500 ketubot as of the moment I’m writing it, and worked with almost the same number of rabbis. And a large number of rabbis have told us that:

According to the Halacha, there should be no signature on the Ketubah, other than the official signatures (such as the witnesses) — because, if there is, it could theoretically create ambiguity over this other signature on the control.

This is similar to how, if two people sign a legal contract, if there are random other signatures on the legal contract, a judge could have doubts about the validity of the contract if there’s a dispute.

Although Rabbis debate these sorts of questions among themselves and, as the old joke goes, 2 Jews, 3 Opinions, this makes sense to us. Plus, it makes it easier for us considering our artists are mostly in Argentina!

In order to make it clear that every Ketubah is unique, we also offer all couples a Certificate of Authenticity along with their Ketubah.

Sometimes, it’s a bit scary to buy a Ketubah online: what if there’s a problem? What if it doesn’t look good? What will it even look like in person? Is it even valid according to the Halacha?

Before the 2000s, almost everyone bought their Ketubah through their local Judaica store. But the Internet has been revolutionizing the Ketubah industry, as it has almost every other industry; today, almost all Ketubot are purchased online. Even Chassidic rabbis, who barely used Ketubot from Ketubah artists online a generation ago, now often recommend finding a ketubah online.

There are three big risks to buying a ketubah online: what if it looks different than the online photo? What if you don’t like it? And who can you talk to if you have any questions or problems?

Let me explain how we at Team Ketubah HQ (for This is Not a Ketubah – yes it is!) deal with these three risks. We’re obsessed with eliminating all risks and ensuring that your Ketubah is 1000% perfect, so we do a lot of little things to make sure we eliminate all the risks.

First, what will the material even look like? This is hard to solve online, so there are two solutions to that. First, we have lots and lots of photos and descriptions of our Ketubot — including photos from lots of couples! Looking at lots and lots of photos, not just graphical images but photos, goes a long way towards showing you what they look like.

A second solution is, we work with Judaica stores in a few major cities (New York, where we have a studio half the year, so you can meet us in person and see lots of our works then; Los Angeles; and Toronto, as of now!) so just ask us and we’ll recommend where to go to see our Ketubot in person, if you happen to be by one of those major cities!

The second problem is, what if you don’t like it? This risks exists anywhere, with anything you buy, and we combat it with our awesome no-questions money back guarantee! There are a few minor footnotes (we don’t refund customization or personalization work for example) but you don’t like it, we’ll give you your money back!! Just make sure you order it with enough time and there’s no risk because you can always send it back: this is how deeply confident we are in our work: we put our money where our mouth is!

The third risk is, what if you have a question or problem? Well, here at Ketubah HQ, we go all-out to give you the awesomest customer service in the ketubah universe! If you have any question at any time, just give us a call: (347) 627-0022 or email Nina directly at nina@tinak.org and we’ll get back to you by the next business day hopefully!

But the biggest risk of all is… what if your rabbi doesn’t approve? Have no fear–we will work closely with your rabbi in order to ensure he 100% approves! We will never print a Ketubah without the authorization of your rabbi!

The Ketubah universe is more digital by the moment! Any questions? Doubts? Fears? Hesitations? Just ask! We love talking to everyone! :)

-Morgan
Team Ketubah

Team Ketubah had a vote this morning: which is the sweetest Ketubah of them all?

I’ll jump to the answer The Romantic Ketubah — but first let me explain why we mean by the “sweetest.”

First, it must be called a Ketubah: A rose by any other name might smell as sweet, Shakespeare said (“but not if it’s called a ‘stink blossom’,” Bart Simpson added) — but with a Ketubah, it must — first and foremost — be a Ketubah!

Secondly, it must be cheesy enough. The only way to be sweet without being cheesy is by being subtle — but if it’s subtle, then it’s almost always lost on everyone! Confession: here at Ketubah HQ, we love cheesiness!

Third, it can’t be too cheesy. Then we’d have a cheese-bomb! We want red roses, but not bouquets and bouquets of red roses!

Fourth, it needs to represent you two as a couple — it can’t be too abstract. The sweetest Ketubahs are the ones showing the couple in love, in our opinion: capturing forever the moment when both of you are at the happiest moment in your life!

In our opinion, The Romantic Ketubah satisfies all of these criteria. You want a sweet Ketubah? Go for this one! :)

Want any other Ketubah recommendations? Just ask!

Morgan
Team Ketubah

Now this is our sort of wedding:

Now we only need such super-modern Ketubahs…!

Hat tip

Sanskrit, Sanskrit — how beautiful you are!

Jews and Indians have a long history — and one very personal for our founder, a Jew who used to live in Maharashtra.

The Bene Israel have been in Bombay since long before our memory begins, when the Jewish Persian traders settled around the world, and used Maharashtra as their center for the subcontinent, long before it had that name. Dozens of centuries before the Jewish hippies of the ’60s adopted the superficial symbols of India as their own symbols!

Inspired by our ancient connections, we’ve created some Ketubahs inspired by the Ketubot of the ancient Jews in India, such as the Konkan Indian Ketubah.

Any Hindu-Jewish couple that is interested in exploring the connections between the religions and regions in the form of a Ketubah or otherwise — give us a call! We’d love to talk to you :)

Morgan
Team Ketubah

Today’s fun Monday-morning reading: A great article in the Times of Israel on… The Jewish sides of Rothko, Mondrian and Pollock.

Note that these three are three of our most popular artists on This is not a Ketubah! Especially our Rothko-inspired Ketubot! It’s powerful to see how these artists have deep and interesting Jewish connections and inspirations — even when they’re not Jewish themselves — on multiple levels.

Super exciting news: a wonderful couple has just asked us to work with them to create… a Ketubah in Japanese!!!

We haven’t created a Ketubah in Japanese before, so this is exciting for us. We’re working on the Japanese translation as we speak!

We’ve created ketubahs recently in a variety of languages, from Chinese and German to Swedish and Spanish! We’re aiming to create a Ketubah in every language. Okay, maybe not Phonecian, but every modern language :)

Having goals, like creating ketubahs in lots of languages, is fun!

Some artists are inspired by the sublime statues and awe-inspiring architecture of Athens and Rome of antiquity; some artists are inspired by the humanized portraits of Rembrandt and the other great Dutch artists. Some artists are inspired by literature and Biblical anecdotes, and others by the simple work of the common American pastoral man. Other artists are inspired by the works of Nature, and still others by the ancient Mesopotamian art of our ancestors. The art which inspired us never represents God in an image, of course.

But here at Ketubah HQ, we in Team Ketubah are inspired by a modern work of art that may or may not be remembered by posterity forever alongside Michelangelo, Chagall, Picasso and Van Gogh. We are inspired by the TV show Princesses: Long Island.

It would be our pleasure to create a Ketubah for Erica Gimbel, Casey Cohen, Chanel Omari, Amanda Bertoncini (are you Jewish by the way?), Joey Lauren or Ashlee White. You are all awesome. We debate you Monday mornings in Ketubah HQ the way some teams debate verses from the Mishna or Gomorrah. But we all love you.

We want you all to find the perfect match and get married, so we can create your Ketubahs!

What is it about Princesses: Long Island that captures our imagination and desires so much, and fills us with excitement at the thought of creating a Ketubah for any of these young women?

First of all, it would be misleading not to admit one point: one of us here on Team Ketubah, without naming names, is from the same town where half the cast is from and much of the show takes place, the big GN. This member of our team, being about a decade older than the girls doesn’t know them personally, although his cousins (ten years younger and also from the same town do).

This show is a documentary of his life growing up. It brings back the heeby-jeebies just watching it. It’s helps him imagine: I escaped, but this is how life turns out for those who don’t! It’s like reliving high school, but with the wisdom that we lacked then — and, standing afar, the ability to laugh at it!

But the whole charm is, we’re not laughing “at” them, but “with” them because they’re laughing throughout. They have enough detachment to know what they’re doing, to enjoy it. The first episode ends with one of them declaring, “This is why we’re still single” — they understand the consequences of the behavior, and this gives it a level of self-consciousness and sophistication that we’re just not used to on Television. This wins us over.

Every episode has one line that’s so fantastic, it makes every moment worth it. In the first episode, it was Ashlee’s freaking out when driving in Freeport — although you really need to be from Longuyland to understand all the implications there. In the third episode, the line was…. we had a “Shabbatcalypse”! This is my new favorite word and I want to start using it all the time. Don’t have a Shabbatcalypse this weekend! This has instantly joined the pantheon of phrases that we use around the office! We love you!

Girls, we hope you get married and we would love to create Ketubahs for you. We have a policy of not doing discounts (we pride ourselves on giving the awesomest prices always to everyone, we don’t really have room to reduce it more!) but I think I would pay out of my own pocket for a discount to create your Ketubah for you!

-morgan
Team Ketubah

Here at Ketubah HQ, we few, we happy few, we members of Team Ketubah will proudly show our sleeves to the world and announce, We Are Nerds. We are nerds and we make nerdy Ketubahs; we are geeks, and we make geeky ketubahs. But above all, we are proud to be Nerds and in particular, proud to be Ketubah Nerds! Go Ketubah Nerds!

Of course, as nerds, making such declarations is fraught with subtle implications that we need to talk about, for the nerd leaves nothing left unsaid unless it is unthought.

The first question this brings up is, what, indeed, is a nerd and, in particular, what is a nerd in the context of ketubah-making?

A nerd, I — a very proud nerd! and a Jewish nerd (someone not from Long Island would thing these two words might be redundant!) — would define it as, is someone whose inner-life is so rich that he doesn’t have a sense of social conventions that other people (at least, people other than our close cousins with autism!) have.

Our disregard for social convention is a key part of what inspires our creativity. Key Ketubah references here: while the entire Ketubah world followed the convention of making Ketubot that look like our grandmother’s art, we — being nerds and thus lacking our understanding of the conventions! — started creating out there, over the top art for Ketubahs. The ultimate chutzpah: we are indeed Jewish after all!

Our nerdiness, in other words, drives our creativity.

Now here is where it gets particularly interesting: nerds tend to be interested in broadly similar topics. Topics that usually involve, getting to the bottom of things, figuring out how things work.

We’ve definitely been doing this for the Ketubah world. We even use Ancient Aramaic in our studio! V’Keninah, anyone? :)

As a result, we tend to create ketubot on what are often nerdy themes: our subway ketubahs, for example. And no comment on our unicorn Ketubah! (That was a commissioned one originally! I promise!).

But this begs the question: nerd or geek? As you can tell from reading the above, we have a preference for seeing ourselves as nerds. Nina might see herself as a geek (she spends a disproportionate amount of her non-work, non-shabbas time figuring out cool technological everything with her husband; want more information? Ask her!). The geek is probably similar to the nerd with this difference: the nerd just doesn’t “get” accepted social conventions or skills; the geek does–and he explicitly rejects them.

Not quite the schlemiel and the schlamazal (the first spills his soup; the second gets soup spilled on him), but something like that. But we promise not to spill any soup onto your Ketubah!