Ketubah for Shavuot, decorated parchment manuscript. [Apparently Tangiers, Morocco, ca. 1860s-1870s].
Ink and paint on parchment.
Written on a large rectangular parchment sheet. The text is arranged in two columns, the right column for the first day of Shavuot and the left column for the second day. The text is written mostly in Sephardic semi-cursive script, with a few words emphasized in square script.
The ketubah for Shavuot is a "marriage contract" between the Jewish people and the Torah, based on the piyyut Yarad Dodi LeGano by R. Yisrael Najara (1555?-1628?). This piyyut fashions the text of the Jewish ketubah into a metaphor for the relationship between the Jewish people and the Torah.
The ketubah is thus written as a contract between the bridegroom, the people of Israel, and "G-d's perfect Torah", in the Sinai Desert on 6th Sivan 2448 (1313 BCE) – traditionally held to be the date of the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai. In the "Tena'im" the bridegroom obliges himself to "never marry another woman aside from her as long as she lives, from any of the external sciences", "not to go off and leave her", and "not to leave her in a state of anger or negligence".
The upper half of the parchment sheet features an architecturally detailed illustration depicting a synagogue interior, dominated by an ornate Torah ark adorned with traditional decorative elements, flanked by classical marble columns. The ark is topped by a rectangular frame bearing the caption "the crown of Torah of She'erit Yosef", apparently hinting at the ketubah's provenance from the She'erit Yosef synagogue, established in Tangiers in the 1860s.
A similar ketubah is found in the Braginsky Collection in Zürich, doubtlessly drawn by the same artist, bearing the name of the Nefutzot Yehudah synagogue in Gibraltar. Tangiers is a mere 90 km distance away from Gibraltar, and the Strait of Gibraltar separating them was apparently no obstacle for the artist to draw a ketubah in each location. Another (ordinary) ketubah, apparently decorated by the same artist (Gibraltar, 1833), is documented in the Center for Jewish Art, item 48904 (formerly of the Gross Family Collection, Tel Aviv).
67.5X57 cm. Overall good condition. Stains, mainly to lower margins and upper corners, only slightly affecting text and illustrations.
For further information and comparison, see: René Braginsky Collection, K26; Shalom Sabar (2022), Vol. II, No. 470 (KET 354).
