It’s Not Just a Ketubah – Yes It Is! An Enquiry Into The Origin Of Our Wacky Name

Our name is as fun and passionate as every member of our team is, as our website is, as we are together about creating amazing Ketubot (“ketubahs” as so many say!) for every one of our couples.

But we get some questions about our name. The most common is, “Huh? Wait, but you are a Ketubah!”.

Oh, we have so many ways to answer this! Where to start!

First: We’re not a Ketubah — we’re a team of artists here in Argentina that that love making ketubot. We’re not a Ketubah, we’re Ketubah-Artists!

Second: What we do make is Ketubot! Yes, they are Ketubot. Yes, our Orthodox Ketubot are valid according to the binding laws of the Halachah. Yes, we’ve reviewed them with hundreds of Rabbis (literally, hundreds now!). So yes, what we do make are Ketubot.

Third: Irony! Irony, irony, irony. Forget buffalo buffalos buffalo; instead, lets irony irony irony, irony irony with irony!

Fourth: Our inspiration for our name was the fantastic piece of art by René Magritte, The Treachery of Images. It’s the piece of art at the top of this post. If you don’t know it, you should; if you do know it, then you probably got the joke as soon as you first saw our name (and then why are you even reading this post?). Magritte’s classic piece is less commonly known by its treacherous name and more commonly know by its inscription, Ceci n’est pas une pipe — a picture of a pipe immediately below it saying that it is not a pipe. Magritte’s classic joke is playing off of the same tensions we are in our first answer above (well, I should say, we are playing off of the same ones he is; he did come first, after all! By quite a margin!): the piece is not a “pipe” but a “piece of art featuring a pipe”, etc.

Fifth: isn’t being self-referential fun?

Due to our fun name, we’re also known by lots of synonyms or variations. Lets list some of them. The most common is “TINAK.” We changed our email addresses from @thisisnotaketubah.com to @tinak.org just because so many people would not be able to spell the domain — do you know how many spellings of “ketubah” there are? (Ketubah, ketuba, katubah, katuba, ktuba, etc!). So we started going by our acronym and it stuck.

The other reason is, our full name is 7 syllables and TINAK is just 2 syllables. And as lowly Argentines, saying 2 syllables is easier than 7!

But lots of people call us by other variations of our name, inserting fun words, such as: “Not just a Ketubah” (That’s my favorite: we’re not just a Ketubah; we’re a whole ketubah experience!!!!), “Not a normal Ketubah”, and often just “Not a Ketubah”. We often call ourselves “Team Ketubah” because we think it sounds fun and cool, too. Especially when we answer the phone (by the way, we’re friendly, call us at 347-627-0022 any time you want to Ketubah-talk!).

But at the end of the day, a word is just a placeholder for a deeper meaning. And, no matter what Wittgenstein tried to convince the world (and he seems to have just been playing one big joke on everyone in the Tractus, don’t you think?), what matters is the reality below the words. We, TINAK, are committed to the awesome reality underneath everything: a Ketubah you will be proud to display in your house the rest of your life; a Ketubah that is museum-quality; a Ketubah that has the perfect and correct wording for you two; a Ketubah that makes all your Ketubah dreams come try. Why not?

-Morgan
Team Ketubah