After a Maryland teacher’s death, her 200-piece Judaica collection finds new life in a Jewish museum

JTA – As Rae Ann Kaylie sat on her mother’s couch in the wake of her death, the Judaica felt overwhelming. 

More than 50 menorahs adorned the shelves. A dozen seder plates had been meticulously hung alongside a trove of Jewish art on each wall. And countless dreidels, kiddush cups, and shofars filled every corner of the 1 000-square-foot (92.9 square-metre) home in Rockville, Maryland. 

There were so many hamsas hanging near the entrance, Kaylie joked, “Whoa, mom, what on earth? Like, how much evil eye do we have in here?” 

For 35 years, Kaylie’s mother, Deborah Brodie, had amassed a collection of more than 200 Jewish ritual objects, which she had used as a hands-on classroom for her Hebrew school pupils with special needs. Among the collection, Brodie had also obtained a Torah from eBay, which her scholars used to practise for their B’nai mitzvah. 

“She wasn’t the one who was, ‘Oh, don’t touch it. You’re going to break it’,” Kaylie said. “She was, ‘Touch it, here, take a bunch’, you know what I mean, and that was really cool about her entire collection.” 

Brodie ‒ known as “Bubbie Cookie” to her family ‒ had not built the collection alone. Her longtime partner, Jay Brill, whom she met through a personals ad in 1986, was alongside her throughout the journey, travelling with her to all 50 states to sell Jewish jewellery and a computerised Hebrew-learning programme they created together. 

Over the years, the couple attended both B’nai Shalom and Shaare Tefila Congregation, two Conservative synagogues in Olney, Maryland. Towards the end of their lives, they attended Chabad of Olney, whose rabbi officiated their funerals. 

But after Brodie, 76, and Brill, 74, died in February just 19 days apart, Kaylie said she and her family were faced with a painful question: What would happen to the couple’s lifetime of Jewish devotion in their absence? 

“We all picked something we wanted, but then, you know, you don’t want to sell it, you don’t want to make any money off it,” Kaylie said. “It was just trying to figure out what can we do to further her passion, her vision?” 

The answer, Kaylie said, arrived through Instagram. 

Earlier this month, Kaylie sent a simple message to Nick Fox, who operates a social media series titled Millennial Inheritance, writing, “Hey, you want to see a lot of menorahs?” 

Since October, Fox has documented dozens of inheritance stories across his social media channels, featuring people grappling with their late parents’ vast collections of Breyer Horse figurines, salt and pepper shakers, and Christmas decorations. 

But while Fox said the mission of his page is not necessarily to help people find homes for inherited collections, Kaylie’s story felt different. As he viewed images of Brodie and Brill’s home, Fox, who is Catholic, said that he immediately flashed back to childhood memories attending his classmates’ Barmitzvahs and receiving souvenir hamsas from their trips to Israel. 

“It was the fact that she was actively grieving and really had no idea what to do, and I think the fact that I was raised how I was, where I was, that I had a knowledge of what this stuff was and what it meant,” Fox said. 

Just days later, he posted a short video for his 200 000 followers featuring snippets of the sprawling collection along with a call to help find it a permanent home that would “love it the way Rae Ann’s mom did”. 

As the post garnered hundreds of comments offering ideas for the collection’s future, and tributes to Brodie’s contributions to Jewish education, it was also making its way through Washington’s Jewish community. 

The morning after the post, Jonathan Edelman, the collections curator for the Lillian and Albert Small Capital Jewish Museum, said he woke up to dozens of messages from people urging the museum to find a home for the collection. 

“It was so meaningful that so many people in the broader community, and who have never stopped in our museum, tagged us and said, ‘You know, this should be the home of this sort of wild story and this amazing collection’,” Edelman said. 

By the following weekend, Edelman had travelled to Brodie’s home to meet with Rae Ann to view the collection himself. But even after seeing Fox’s post, Edelman said he was unprepared for what awaited him inside. 

“It was incredible, floor-to-ceiling Judaica like I’d never seen in anyone’s home before,” Edelman said. “It wasn’t just thrown on a shelf. It was so thoughtfully laid out. I mean, she had seder plates and chanukkiot hanging on the wall, which is no easy task to do … it felt like a museum-quality display. It was really impressive.” 

Edelman quickly reported back to the museum, which opened in June 2023, telling them that he believed he had stumbled upon an “incredible opportunity” to launch its inaugural education collection. 

Now, the Capital Jewish Museum has plans to house the entirety of Brodie and Brill’s collection in its second-floor education and programme space, the Community Action Lab, where visitors will be able to interact with the Judaica first-hand, just as Brodie encouraged her pupils to do in her home. 

The museum also plans to photograph the collection so it is accessible online, and lend individual pieces to schools and organisations in the area for educational use. 

“When I heard her mother’s story, you know, we were doing the same thing. Our goal was Jewish education, and she did it as an individual, we’re doing it as an institution,” Edelman said. “It means so much for us to honour her mother’s memory by doing the work that she dedicated her life to … it feels particularly special.” 

But while Fox said he was not surprised by the outpouring of support and suggestions from the Jewish community, he said other Jews who inherit large quantities of Judaica should not look to Kaylie’s story as a roadmap. 

“This is absolute best-case scenario, but it also makes it so very unique, because there aren’t going to be a lot of collections that museums usually are going to take on,” Fox said, adding that people should not assume that inheritances will find a place in a museum. 

Instead, he encouraged people who inherit Jewish collections to consult their local Jewish community centres or synagogues to see if they might have a use for them. 

“In the case of someone having a tremendous amount of Judaica, I think the best way would be to tap into your network, first, talk to people that you know in your community,” Fox said. “And then if it goes nowhere … the big ask would be, what would your relatives want done with that stuff?” 

Rachel Steinhardt, a California resident who organised a large-scale Judaica drive for people impacted by the Palisades and Eaton fires last year, recommended local Facebook groups or Judaica rehoming communities such as L’dor V’dor Judaica or Heritage Judaica. 

“New Judaica is great, but people definitely value something that has been touched and loved and appreciated over the years … you want something that has a little soul in it,” Steinhardt said. “So I think that even something that’s not of value, other people can appreciate that it has been loved and want to acquire it.” 

Reflecting on Fox’s decision to spotlight her mother’s collection, Kaylie said that he had been a “guardian angel”. 

“He didn’t have to do that, and really, it’s because of him that we’re able to have my mom’s legacy be how we could have wanted it,” Kaylie said. 

Edelman said he expects the collection to be installed in the museum sometime this summer, where it will be displayed alongside a plaque honouring “Bubbie Cookie” and “Zayde Jay,” names the couple were referred to by their families. 

For Kaylie, imagining future museum visitors handling her mother’s kiddush cups and menorahs felt like “exactly how she would have wanted it”. 

“When we lost Bubbie Cookie, we said the legend of Bubbie Cookie was over,” Kaylie said. “And now, for the legend and the legacy to move on, I mean, it’s unreal. I have no words, I can’t even articulate it. It’s just amazing.”