the high speed blender of american culture has produced it's share of mostrosities like frozen "bagels", filled with strawberries and cream cheese in supermarkets and a half scale Eiffel tower with slot machines at it's feet in Las Vegas to name two.

but not every reinterpretation of an old world favorite is a failure. consider what is happening to the traditional jewish wedding contract, the ketubah, signed immediately before the ceremony by the bride, the bridegroom and the witnesses. although not legally binding, like a preuptial agreement, it looks much better as wall art, especially now that artists are writing and illustrating them with increasing fancifullness.

stephanie caplan, an east village artist who is booked solid through october on wedding contracts, prefers clients willing to let her try new ideas - and often these are interfaith couples. for one such couple, she made a contract with the text contained in three sections of a pie, one english, one hebrew and one japanese, with space around the pie for guests to sign. the edges are decorated with watercolor eucalyptus leaves, symbolizing the bridegroom's california heritage and traditional paper umbrella forms, symbolizing the bride's japanese background.

interfaith couples are "making it up for themselves" said ms. caplan who charges $1000 to $3000 for a custom job. "these aren't your parents' ketubahs." she is right. for one thing, ketubot (that's the plural) of yore would not have had figurative subjects. they remained fairly unadorned legal documents until the 17th century, when jews exiled from spain settled in italy. "much more recently, in the 1960's and 1970's, we see the flourishing of the art in america," said claudia nashon, author of "ketubot: marriage contracts from the jewish museum" (pomegranate, 2000). that's when jewish artists like ben shahn and chaim gross began pushing the form, freeing the text to meander around the page a bit and even to overlap slightly with the drawings."

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