Illu­mi­nat­ing the con­tem­po­rary revival of the Jew­ish mar­riage con­tract, Ketubah Renais­sance relays the sto­ried his­to­ry of this beloved doc­u­ment (known in Hebrew as a ketubah) through the present day and show­cas­es six­ty of the most inno­v­a­tive and beau­ti­ful ketubot of the last half cen­tu­ry.

Orig­i­nal­ly cre­at­ed 2,500 years ago as a uni­lat­er­al mar­riage con­tract stat­ing what a groom would pro­vide for his bride, the ketubah evolved from the tenth cen­tu­ry onward into a rich­ly dec­o­rat­ed expres­sion of love and com­mit­ment. Start­ing in the late 1960s a mod­ern sen­si­bil­i­ty took root. Influ­enced by Jew­ish life and North Amer­i­can soci­ety at large, hun­dreds of artists and cal­lig­ra­phers began to imprint their unique aes­thet­ic onto each ketubah design — a move­ment Judaica schol­ar Shalom Sabar calls ​“a ver­i­ta­ble renais­sance of the illu­mi­nat­ed ketubah” — while also updat­ing the orig­i­nal Ara­ma­ic text to express con­tem­po­rary val­ues. A curat­ed, chrono­log­i­cal ketubah gallery brings read­ers up close to six­ty influ­en­tial ketubot and the artists who cre­at­ed them — a col­or­ful cor­nu­copia of break­throughs that epit­o­mize the ketubah renaissance.