Cantor Debbie Katchko Gray with Dr. Josh Perelman, Deputy Director for Exhibitions, Programs and Collections at the National Museum of American Jewish History

RIDGEFIELD – As a fourth-generation cantor, Deborah Katchko Gray has not only inherited the talent and passion of the generations who came before her, but the tangible tools of the trade as well.
“I’ve always had a love of history, collecting, and family artifacts, especially relating to my grandfather, Cantor Adolph Katchko,” she says – seven large portfolios worth, which she’d hoped to pass down to her four sons.
“But I realized that, as they get older, they’ll probably take one look at this stuff and throw it out because what will they do with it?” she says. “It’s too much.”
Katchko Gray, who has been cantor at Temple Shearith Israel in Ridgefield since 1999, is the second woman to serve as cantor in a Conservative synagogue. She co-founded the Women Cantors’ Network in 1982, and recently produced “Katchko: 3 Generations of Cantorial Art,” a songbook that traces her family’s cantorial history.
Over the years, she has donated her grandfather’s cantorial manuscripts to Jewish Theological Seminary and Hebrew Union College, and was about to bring her collection to HUC’s American Jewish Archives in Cincinnati.
Then, in November, the National Museum of American Jewish History opened in Philadelphia, and the cantor realized that her family’s artifacts could reach a wider audience there.
“I thought this might be an opportunity to tell bigger stories,” she says: “the Golden Age of hazzanut or the evolving role of women cantors.”
She contacted the museum and was asked to email photos and descriptions of the items in her collection. “I was completely shocked when they said they liked everything, and invited me to bring it all down,” she says.
Katchko Gray brought her portfolios and boxes to be examined by Josh Perelman, the museum’s deputy director of exhibitions, programs and collections. A few months later, she received the verdict: the museum wanted everything –  archival materials including letters, diplomas, prayer books, journals, photographs, recordings, song books and other items and documents related to Katchko Gray’s own career and to the history of the Women Cantors’ Network. She also donated her grandfather’s cantorial hat, manuscripts, photographs, and recordings, and music that he used in his work.
“For the Museum, the donation of this extraordinary collection is a lasting opportunity to exhibit artifacts and educate visitors about the cantorial profession in America,” Perelman says. “It also allows us to tell the unique story of generations of cantors from the same family.”
Two items from the collection are currently on display: Adolph Katchko’s cantorial hat, and a letter written by Katchko Gray when she was 8 or 10, growing up in White Plains, N.Y. Addressed to the leadership of Saks Fifth Avenue, the letter expresses a child’s outrage at the presence of Christmas decorations during the winter, and nothing celebrating Chanukah. Katchko Gray’s mother saved the letter, along with its response. It is displayed in the museum’s section on mid-20th-century American Judaism.
“I’m so floored because, in a million years, I wouldn’t have remembered that letter,” Katchko Gray says. “I couldn’t have imagined that they would find it to be of historic value. Maybe in the early 1960s we weren’t afraid to speak up, even though we still  weren’t an obvious presence. Now, of course, Chanukah decorations are everywhere; markers of our culture are more mainstream now.”
The museum also chose to include the Women Cantors’ Network postcard in an exhibition exploring the evolving role of women in Judaism.