Rae Ann Kaylie calls her parents’ modest townhouse in Derwood, Maryland, “The Jewseum.” Her mother, a Hebrew schoolteacher, started collecting Judaica about 35 to 40 years ago.
“Everything from menorahs to Seder plates, shofars, yods, Shabbat candle holders … lots of art, Kiddush cups.” There’s even a real, full-size Torah.
In the 1980s, Kaylie’s mother started working with students who have special needs.
“And from there, she started teaching bar and bat mitzvahs and also working at different synagogues, helping students with special needs, with a variety of different disabilities and educational needs,” Kaylie said.
The collection was the result of decades of checking eBay and estate and yard sales. Kalie said her mother used the items to teach students, telling stories of Jewish history and heritage while explaining the intricacies of the Hebrew language and the Jewish religion.
Kaylie’s mother died recently. Her stepfather followed less than a month later. The losses left her saddled with grief and a house full of belongings.
“Obviously, we wanted a piece or two of it, but we wanted to keep it together in some way,” Kaylie said. “It’s overwhelming. We would come in here after they passed away, and just look around and say, ‘Wow. What do we do next? What’s the next step for us?'”
She wondered how to preserve the items her family collected and how to preserve their legacy.
“We didn’t have a plan. We absolutely didn’t have a plan. It didn’t feel right to, No. 1, make really money on this. It didn’t feel right to take this and split it up because it’s such a collection and it meant so much to both of them,” Kaylie said.
Enter Nick Fox, who created the Millennial Inheritance series on Instagram.
Kaylie messaged him and showed him what she inherited.
She said Fox was touched with by her mother’s work helping students with special needs and how she used the religious items to teach them. He helped make a video, which Kaylie said currently has more than 16,000 likes.
The Capital Jewish Museum has agreed to take most of the collection. It will be kept in a room where children can touch and experience the objects and learn from them, similar to how other children learned from Kaylie’s mother.
“I got very lucky with this, but it has been, it’s been very overwhelming and challenging when you lose two people that you love so dearly within 19 days of each other, and then you come to a home and you see this, and you just really don’t know what to do next and what the next step is. It’s absolutely overwhelming,” Kaylie said.
It’s a problem facing the children of baby boomers across country. People are inheriting collections they don’t need, don’t have space for and that in some cases, aren’t worth much money.
Kaylie suggested getting ahead of the issue with your own family. It can be difficult advice to follow, but she said it’s important to know what loved ones would have wanted.
“When the grief comes and you lose someone you love so much and you know how much this collection means to you, it is a very, very hard experience to deal with because you don’t know what the next step is,” Kaylie said. “You’re dealing with all this grief and you’re trying to figure out exactly, you know, how to honor your family and to keep their legacy going on.”
WTOP’s Abigail Constantino contributed to this report.
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