Our Story

My husband and I got engaged in September of 2023. We traveled to Israel for Sukkot to celebrate with our family and friends. We couldn’t have anticipated what happened next...

On October 9th, 2023, my then-fiance was called up to his reserve unit in Northern Israel. I traveled back to the US while he served in his elite combat unit of the IDF. In December 2023, I returned to Israel, and we had a beautiful wedding in the Golan Heights with his entire miluim unit present. Soon after he returned from service, we started planning a reception in the US with our friends and family who couldn’t make it to our army wedding in Israel.

As a designer, I knew I would have a hard time finding a bencher for our reception that I loved. I searched all the main sites and didn’t see a single cover design that looked like it was created in this decade. Surely, there had to be something better out there. I searched and found nothing. That’s when I decided I would have to design my own bencher. I wanted to include our wedding photos from Israel. I wanted it to be personalized.

I soon realized why no one had done this before…

Every major bencher website has a partnership with a well-known bencher publisher. They use the standard text from these distributors and slap on a cover design. Adding your name was all you could personalize! You probably have a collection of these benchers near your Shabbos table. How often do you see a unique bencher with photos of the bride and groom, or bar mitzvah boy inside?

As a designer with an editorial and event design background, this just didn’t work for me. What transpired next was a months-long project of typing out all the Hebrew text, transliteration, and English translations into inDesign so that I could design every inch of my personalized bencher.

We gave out our personalized benchers at our wedding reception, and the response was incredible. People had a stronger reaction to our benchers than they did to our wedding video from Israel! Everyone kept telling me, “You have to sell these!” or, “Can you make these for my son’s bar mitzvah?” or “I’ve never seen anything like this” and “The order of this bencher actually makes sense!”

And so, here we are. Beautifully designed benchers, personalized just for you.

All the design, artwork, & layouts are created by me, Morgan Lael | Colorway Creative, LLC. 

Each bencher is carefully edited by Rabbi Yonason Goldson | EthicsNinja.com

The English translation for Grace After Meals was printed with written permission from the award-winning professor and author Rachel Adler, PhD. We are so honored she allowed us to use her beautifully poetic English translations.

Additional English text is adapted from the (public domain) Standard Prayer Book by Simeon Singer [1915].