What is a ketubah? Technically, it is a 2,000 year old document that is a pre-nuptial agreement laying out the responsibilities of the bride and groom entering the marriage. The ketubah was intended to protect the Jewish woman at a time when women had no rights on their own. It protected the wife in case of the husband’s untimely death or in cases where a man decided to ‘discard’ his wife or dissolve the marriage. The ketubah was a legal document written in Aramaic, the vernacular at the time it was developed. It was written in Aramaic rather than Hebrew, to make sure that everyone reading the document could understand what it said.

Any modern text, be it a Reform Egalitarian, Interfaith or our Secular Humanist, is not necessarily a pre-nuptial agreement, rather it is a couple’s statement of love and commitment to each other using the traditional form of a ketubah. So if you ask an Orthodox rabbi, he would probably tell you that only the Orthodox text qualifies as an actual ketubah. If you ask a Conservative rabbi, you might hear that the Orthodox text is out of date and that you need the Lieberman Clause added to your text to protect the wife against abandonment. But if you are a modern, reform, secular or unaffiliated Jew getting married in 2015 America, than the secular humanist text is a ketubah as well.

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