Sephardic Ketubot

         The Jewish National and University Library (JNUL) in Jerusalem has a web page (http://jnul.huji.ac.il/dl/ketubbot/) for ketubot (marriage contracts) from all over the world. The JNUL webpage contains ketubot from its own archives collection and also from various other institutions in Israel: the Ben Zvi Institute, Museum of Israel, etc as well as from large collections from outside the country such as the Jewish Theological Seminary (New York), the Dahan Collection (Brussels) etc.
         All the Ketubot of the Israeli collections have already been indexed in: Guidebook for Sephardic and Oriental Genealogical Sources in Israel, by Mathilde Tagger and Yitzchak Kerem (Avotaynu, 2006).
         The present index covers 474 ketubot from foreign collections only. The marriage contracts themselves are from 17 countries and 115 various localities, most of them from the 19th century but there are also a few from the mid 16th century. They include nearly 1,500 persons. Especially in Morocco, Jews had the tradition of adding a chain of ancestors to the names of the grooms and the brides. In some cases one can count 7-8 generations backwards. A treasure trove for the genealogist!
         A link is provided for each Ketuba to permit immediate viewing of the document.
         Many of these documents are real pieces of art with their magnificent colored or black- and-white illuminations.