A kettubah with a spine

On Wednesday, thanks to Abba and I guess in a big part to Ari, I had a very cool Mea Shearim experience.

I was working on one of my papers in the Schechter library when Abba called seeing if I was home. I said no but depending on the reason, I could get myself home. He said that he was on his way to Mea Shearim to buy a klaf for the ketubbah.

I got myself home and changed into Mea Shearim approriate garb and headed off with Abba to the klaf store.

If Abba had not had the phone number for the store, we would have never found it. It was behind white metal doors around the side and across the street from the address that Abba had. Inside this very airconditioned room were 2 tables, and a counter. Behind the counter was a floor to ceiling shelving unit filled with rolls of parchments of different sizes- cut, uncut, for mezzuzot, for meggilot and for Torah scrolls....and for our ketubbah.

The guy working there brought out a huge roll with about 30 different parchments, Let me and Abba go through the first half to see what we were looking for and then he went through the rest pulling out ones that matched. I don't think that I had ever seen an uncut parchment before. Abba could barely get over how clean they were and what a nice texture and weight they had. I thought that the coolest thing was that you could tell (due to a different toned stripe down the middle) that this had infact been a cow. The parchment we chose had a beautiful spine and great color.

After we had chosen, the guy at the shop offered to have lines put on it so that Abba could just write the text using their lines- he even offered to have space left around the sides for decoration. I started to chuckle- you don't know my Abba. While I asked if he had internet so that I could show him what it would look like, Abba explained that he does everything himself.

Thank you to Abba for inviting me along. I can't wait to see the finished product.

Thank you Ari for making me your wife (and for giving me this beautiful Ketubbah).