My photography has been nominated in the prestigious international competition The Photography Masters Cup. It is always an honor to be recognized like this, especially when the other nominees are such amazing artists from all over the world. There is some wonderful inspiring art here, and browsing this collection will fuel my creative fire for a while! If you’d like to learn more about the photograph that was nominated, and how I created it from a dried autumn leaf, check out my other blog Daniel Sroka Open Studio.
When my wife and I got married, we were still living in San Francisco, but our wedding was closer to our family in New Jersey. Let me tell you, planning a long distance wedding has its challenges! One of which is how to safely bring your ketubah on the plane with you. I get asked this a lot, so I thought I’d share some advice. First, have me ship your ketubah to you, not to the wedding site. It is really important that you see your ketubah in person, well before the ceremony. This will let you look it over carefully, and make sure that it is exactly what you ordered. And if it got accidentally damaged in shipment, this will give me a chance to replace it for you.
Traveling with your ketubah
I ship your ketubah rolled between sheets of acid-free tissue paper, and placed in an extra-strong shipping tube. Experience has shown that this is the safest way to ship unframed fine art. (Shipping it flat is both more expensive, and results in more damage.) So the best way to travel with a ketubah is to reuse this shipping tube. Place your ketubah between the tissue paper I provided, and carefully reroll in and place it in the tube. You now have a safe and portable package to carry with you. Be sure to bring it with you in carry-on, or stash it safely deep in the middle of your suitcase, surrounded on all sides by clothes.
When you arrive
When you get to the location of your wedding, take your ketubah out of the tube, and let it unroll. The paper will keep its curl for a while, but don’t worry. The paper of your ketubah is 100% cotton-rag, so it will easily “forget” the curl over time. When you remove it, you could gently use the tube to roll it in the opposite direction to remove the curl more quickly. If you feel uncomfortable doing this, just lay it flat like I suggested for a day or so to get rid of the worst of the curl. For my own wedding, I used an inexpensive poster frame to flatten the ketubah, and then protect it throughout the wedding and reception. When you are ready to have it framed, your framer can make sure that any remaining curl is removed.
During an interview, Star Trek (and Lost) director J.J. Abrams had this to say about interfaith marriage:
My wife is Irish Catholic and it’s a fascinating thing having married someone who’s of a different religion, because you get to understand and see and respect another way of growing up and believing. That to me is interesting and healthy.
I always say interfaith couples have a deep understanding of religion’s place in their lives. A same-religion couple can (often erroneously) make the assumption that they share the same traditions and beliefs. But an interfaith couple cannot make any assumptions. They have to talk about how they were raised, what they believe, what they are unsure of. They have to think how they want to raise their kids, and celebrate the holidays. The have to figure out how to talk about family, heaven, sin, faith, God. They have to talk, they have to discuss, and more importantly, they have to make decisions about all this as a couple. This ongoing conversation makes them, their family, and their faith stronger.
One thing I have learned is that every ketubah is unique. Each one takes on the personality of the couple who make it, through the design they select, the words they choose. Watching each couple craft a ketubah that reflects their personality is one of the things that make my job as a ketubah artist so interesting.
One couple, Krista and Matthew, just came to me with a unique and fun request. They are an interfaith couple, Catholic and Jewish. So they wanted the text of their ketubah to reflect both of their traditions. But their idea was to not just do this through the words they used, but through the languages used as well. Just like Judaism is grounded in its use of Hebrew, Catholicism is rooted in Latin. Although it is not used anymore for regular services, the language is still a part of the flavor of Catholic culture. Krista and Matthew wanted their ketubah to respect both of these linguistic traditions. So we created a ketubah that blended English, Hebrew and Latin. Luckily Krista had an aunt who knew enough Latin to provide a translation! The result was quite special, and very much reflected the personality of Krista and Matthew.
