June 2024
Ketubah (Marriage Contract)
David Moss (b. 1946)
Paper collage and cutout, ink on wood panel
United States, 1973
Calligraphy inscription from Song of Songs 2:10b-12: My beloved spoke and said to me, “Arise, my darling, my beautiful one, come with me. See! The winter is past; the rains are over and gone. Flowers appear on the earth; the season of singing has come, the cooing of doves is heard in our land.”
In many Western cultures, June has traditionally been considered a popular month for weddings. The origins of this tradition are not entirely clear, but there are several theories based on Roman mythology, weather, and the agrarian calendar. Whatever the origin, we have decided to devote our June Object of the Month to an object of material culture in the Skirball’s collections related to marriage.
Identification with the Jewish community is reaffirmed at each juncture in life. Jewish weddings include a ceremony called Kiddishin, “sanctification”, signifying the sacred relationship into which a couple enters through a joint affirmation. The statement of that affirmation is written into the marriage contract—the ketubah—which is read out loud and/or displayed at the ceremony, so that all who attend can attest to the commitment spelled out in its text. The traditional ketubah is written in Aramaic, the common language among Jews from the first to the eighth centuries CE. Today, these are often supplemented or replaced by contemporary Hebrew and English texts composed by the couple being married.
Beginning in the late 1960s, David Moss began to revive the handwritten, illuminated ketubah The illuminated ketubah, a centuries-old artistic tradition, had virtually disappeared due to the development of quick and affordable printing. David Moss is also the creator of the acclaimed Moss Haggadah. His ketubot are ‘ìilluminated’ in the medieval meaning of the term — artistically rendered to enlighten intellectually and spiritually, to clarify, and to celebrate. Moss, born in Ohio, currently makes his home in Jerusalem.
Ketubah (Marriage Contract)
David Moss (b. 1946)
Paper collage and cutout, ink on wood panel
United States, 1973