Edina artist making new ketubahs for families who lost everything in L.A. fires

At around 8:30 p.m. Jan. 7, in the hotel room to which they had evacuated, Alyse Wagner and her husband got a phone call notifying them that the smoke alarm was sounding back at their home. For the next hour, they kept an eye on the alarm company's phone app.

Then the alarm went quiet.

"That's when we declared time of death of our house," Wagner said.

The house had been in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles. That day a brush fire swept across large swaths of the Palisades and neighboring areas, continuing to burn in coming days, eventually consuming more than 23,000 acres, killing 29 people and destroying nearly 7,000 structures, including the couple's home.

When Wagner and her husband, Jon Sacks, evacuated earlier that day, they'd grabbed nothing beyond "a small crate of sentimental things," Wagner said on the phone from Los Angeles.

When they finally returned to their property weeks later, the only remaining objects of any value were a clawfoot bathtub, an inexpensive blue teapot and a small ceramic bowl.

For Wagner, the worst loss was a pair of silver candlesticks that had belonged to her mother, who died in 2023.

Also greatly missed was the couple's colorfully decorated ketubah, a traditional Jewish marriage contract, which her mother had given them for their wedding. But that loss would have a happier ending.

Wagner was able to track down the ketubah's original creator: Judy Freeman, an Edina artist who has made ketubahs for nearly 50 years.

Reaching out through friends, Wagner asked Freeman whether she could make a duplicate of the ketubah she'd made for them in 2017.

Freeman agreed to do that, using a photo of the original, which features Hebrew lettering and a stylized picture of a tree with colorful leaves.

At that point, Freeman had already agreed to make a new ketubah for another couple who lost theirs in Pacific Palisades, as well.

"These poor people, they lost their whole house," Freeman said. "They just said, 'Can you do it?' and I said, 'Of course, I'm thrilled to do that.' "

She understands why a couple would consider their ketubah so important.

A right to be more equal

The practice of writing a ketubah goes back more than 2,000 years. The document declares the groom's obligation to support his wife, and to provide for her if their marriage ends.

"The Jews were the first ones, with the ketubah contract, to actually say a women was not just the possession of a man," Freeman said. "It gave her the right to be a little more equal."

Freeman, now 71 and technically retired from the ketubah business, said she made about 1,200 ketubahs, sending them to couples in nearly every state and around the world.

She was commissioned to create one for Israel's 50th birthday, making an official visit alongside then senators Rod Grams and Paul Wellstone, to present it in Jerusalem. The Minneapolis Institute of Art has one in its permanent collection (though not currently on display).

She first got into the ketubah business by making one for her own marriage.

"I was an art major at the University of Colorado, and my rabbi said, 'You'll want to make your own ketubah.'" she recalled. "I said, 'Sure, what's a ketubah?'"

Creating the document, carefully copying the traditional lettering her rabbi showed her, was a lot of work, she said.

"I vowed — and it was like childbirth — that I'd never make another one," she said. "But two years later, much like childbirth, I had forgotten how tough it was. A friend got married and asked me to make theirs."

Afterward, she again vowed never to repeat the effort, but word spread and next thing she knew she was in the ketubah business.

"My style is so original that people found me," Freeman said. "They would see one at a wedding and they would want one like it. … Singapore, India, Germany, Israel — I've sent them everywhere."

Ketubahs are widely used, but not all are beautiful works of art, she said. Many are mass-produced. "Mine are all hand-done, in English and Hebrew." And hers have a three-dimensional look, "in that some components are raised from the paper."

To make a ketubah, Freeman would consult with couples on styles, colors and language. "I sketch it out as they are talking to each other — adding initials, names, interests to the sketch — and there it is, their most prized work of art, ready to be enlarged for their home."

She would write the ancient Hebrew letters on heavy paper, often pairing them with an English translation, and decorate the document with a contemporary design of the couple's choice. Some components were raised from the paper.

She quit making them in 2020, during the pandemic.

"I would get done with a ketubah and the couple would call me and say, 'The wedding has been canceled, change the ketubah,'" she said. "I said, 'I do not need this. I'm done with ketubahs.'"

But as it turned out, she wasn't.

Nothing but ashes

Debi and Ira Tenenbaum bought a ketubah from Freeman 25 years ago, after seeing one in the gift shop at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles, a museum of Jewish art and artifacts.

"My husband's an architect, and I like bright, colorful, cool things," Debi said by phone. "We said, 'Let's get something different.'"

On Jan. 7, the Tenenbaums evacuated their Pacific Palisades home at midday but assumed they'd be back later that day.

"Fortunately, I had the wherewithal to say, 'Get the wedding album, get the home movies, get the medicine out of my top drawer," Debi said.

If they had foreseen the destruction, they would have grabbed more things: yearbooks, art, kids' artwork, photos, stamp and coin collections, business papers and Ira's handcrafted furniture.

A few days later, they returned to their neighborhood. Familiar landmarks — the blue house on the corner, the sandwich shop — had disappeared.

"It smelled really bad," she said. "It was worse than smoke — it was a chemical kind of smell. Think of it like this: metal, plastic, like everything in a house melted."

They waited in line for hours before they were permitted to visit their property, escorted by police. "You look in the ashes and you think you're going to find something. But there's nothing."

Now the Tenenbaums are adjusting to their new reality and gradually replacing some things that can be replaced.

Debi contacted Freeman via Shalom House, a Los Angeles store that carries handmade gifts, art and other items of Judaica. The ketubah was important to her.

"Ours was so colorful, which is what we loved about it," she said. "So different and vibrant and colorful."

She hasn't told Ira she is having it made.

"This is a surprise for him," she said. "He loves surprises. It will mean a lot to him."

Freeman, for her part, is touched by both couples' desire, amid all the other destruction they're facing, to restore a meaningful work of art steeped in tradition.

"When I first heard about it, it put me to tears that it would mean that much to somebody," she said. "I wrote to them and said it would be my honor to come out of retirement and do that for you. I was so thrilled because I'm the only one in the world that can do that for them."