A ketubah made by Milwaukee native Judith Joseph may hang in a house you’ve visited. They’re on walls everywhere.
“Someone once said to me, it’s probable that every weekend in this country, somebody’s getting married with one of your ketubahs, and I think that’s probably true,” she said.
Joseph’s work spans across mediums, including woodcuts, paintings and installations. Her specialty, however, remains the art form which she began to practice in high-school—the ketubah. Today, Joseph has crafted over 500 custom-made ketubahs, as well as an array of prints; her unique designs have also been licensed.
Now based in Chicago, Joseph displays a gallery of the intricate ketubahs she has made over the years on her website, as well as her other artworks. Her custom pieces are vibrantly colorful and unique, each one made with careful consideration of her customers’ needs.
“I like to work on one at a time, so that I’m really immersed in that concept,” she said. “I think about the couple and the vibe I got from them and their personalities.”
Her premium custom ketubahs range in price from $3,600-4,900. Joseph said that she settles on a fixed cost with couples beforehand, which allows her to take her time on each piece without upcharging her clients. She creates custom designs, also offering more affordable pre-made prints. Joseph started out making more traditional ketubahs, but her craft “eventually morphed into something much more contemporary.”
Joseph’s love for the ketubah began with an interest in Hebrew calligraphy that complemented her skills as an artist. Along with attending Camp Ramah in high school to strengthen her Hebrew skills, Joseph took calligraphy in a high school art class. Influenced especially by the First Jewish Catalog — a book focusing on cultural traditions — she began to teach herself the form. She crafted her first-ever ketubah for the wedding of Frederick Wenger, then-assistant rabbi at Congregation Emanu-El B’ne Jeshurun.
Upon graduating from art school at University of Wisconsin-Madison, Joseph continued to make ketubahs on the side as “an income stream to support other artistic activities.”
“Ketubahs are part of our heritage, culture and tradition,” she said. “For me, it’s an act of prayer when I create a ketubah, because I’m so grateful for the privilege of doing this and for furthering our culture and our tradition.”
In addition to a lifelong mastery of ketubahs, Joseph teaches classes on watercolor painting, colored pencil drawing, and calligraphy at the Chicago Botanic Garden. She also takes pride in being a member of the Jewish Art Salon, an international group of Jewish visual artists. Her art speaks to a wide range of issues and encompasses myriad forms, yet the thread that ties it all together is her passion for calligraphy, or what she terms “the black line, the vitality of the gesture.”
“You never know what your legacy is going to be as an artist, but I know that the ketubah will be mine,” she said. “They will be handed down because people will be sentimental about them. They’re part of a family story. It gives me great joy to know that these pieces are hanging in people’s homes.”
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You can find Judith Joseph’s ketubahs and her other artwork at JudithJosephArt.com.
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