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

Over 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 1,100-square-foot 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 over 200 Jewish ritual objects, which she had used as a hands-on classroom for her Hebrew school students with special needs. Among the collection, Brodie had also obtained a Torah from eBay, which her students used to practice for their b’nai mitzvah.

“She wasn’t the one who was like, ‘Oh, don’t touch it. You’re going to break it,’” Kaylie said. “She was like, ‘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 Washington Jewish Week personals ad in 1986, was alongside her throughout the journey, traveling with her to all 50 states to sell Jewish jewelry and a computerized Hebrew-learning program they created together.

Over the years, the couple attended both B’nai Shalom and Shaare Tefila Congregation, two Conservative synagogues in Olney, Maryland. Toward 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 of it,” Kaylie said. “It was just trying to figure out, like, 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........

© The Times of Israel