[Avodah] Printed Ketuva: is it Kosher?

[Zev Sero]

Danny Schoemann wrote:
> While watching a Mesader Kidushin painstakingly fill out 2(!) copies
> of a Ketuva, I started wondering.  Would it be OK to have the entire
> document pre-printed; including the names, places and dates?
> Is there some reason why everything but the signatures are not prepared 
> beforehand?

Indeed it is OK, and there is a service <http://kesuba.org> that will do
it for you, all but the signatures and the foot of the kuf in "vekanina".
They determine the correct spelling of all names and places, and email it
as a jpeg file which you can print on whatever fancy paper you like, or
they'll print it on gilt-edged paper and UPS it to you.



> Wondering - and tired of waiting those extra 30 minutes.

Even without pre-printing, there's no reason it should take more than
three minutes, *if* the mesader kidushin has done his homework beforehand.
What takes 30 minutes or longer is when he has to ascertain everybody's
correct names on the spot, and then debate with three other rabbonim the
exact spelling of each name and of the town in which it's taking place,
conduct an in-depth inquiry into whether the names he was given are indeed
correct, debate once again the spelling of the *new* names he discovered,
etc.  This may be enormous fun for those directly involved in the debates,
but boring for everyone else.

Be thankful that among Ashkenazim we only put the main names, and the
place name, and omit nicknames, appellations, and rivers.  I was at a
Temani wedding where the rabbanim spent some time discussing which rivers
Brooklyn was on (as if they'd never done a wedding in Brooklyn before!)
and then discovered that the ketuba form that had been bought didn't have
enough room to write everything, so they had to go buy a new form with
bigger spaces!  That delayed things so much that the chatan and kalah
ended up coming in to eat only 20 minutes before the hall had to be
vacated for the next wedding!


-- 
Zev Sero                      The trouble with socialism is that you
zev at sero.name                 eventually run out of other people’s money
                                                    - Margaret Thatcher