Shearith Israel Hopes to Open the Doors to W. 11th St. Cemetery

By Sasha Fuetsch

One morning, Zachary Edinger woke up with his heart beating out of his chest. He had just woken up from a dream, or nightmare as he called it, where his late grandfather had ominously appeared to tell him off for a decision he’d made at work. It spooked Edinger, maybe rightfully so, as his grandfather had held the very position he was now so very well acquainted with—Sexton of Congregation Shearith Israel.

In 2013, the Congregation Shearith Israel The Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue began raising money to restore the W. 11th St. Cemetery. Edinger was a vital piece in this planning and execution. Original plans for the cemetery included mostly maintenance and restoration of existing structures and plant life. In a statement issued by the synagogue, Stage I, including plans to rebuild the wall and potentially relocate trees that might damage the foundation of the structure, was completed in 2023. Stage II, though, opening the cemetery to the public for tours, landscaping, and heavier ongoing maintenance, has been slow going.

Sexton Zachary Edinger has been a member of Congregation Shearith Israel for as long as he can remember. His mother’s side of the family had been attending Shearith Israel since the 1850s. He was an active community member growing up. Even as a child, he helped with services that required children, like the dressing and undressing of the synagogue’s Torah for events.

Edinger’s grandfather had been the sexton from the 1940s until the 1980s. In 2012, Edinger became sexton. His job is to arrange all liturgic functions: rituals like weddings, circumcisions, and funerals. He also manages the synagogue’s cemeteries and has put a great amount of time into restoring the W. 11th St. Cemetery since 2013. “The story of the cemetery is really amazing. It’s a tiny triangle that tells at least three important stories of New York City history,” Edinger said. The first being the early flourishing of Jewish community in New York. The second being the city’s solution to communicable diseases, at the time –smallpox, measles, yellow fever, malaria, and the third being the industrial growth of the city as W. 11th St. cut through the formerly rectangular cemetery.

The cemetery, erected in 1805, is the second oldest Jewish gravesite in New York. A total of 66 people were buried here between 1805 and 1830. It used to span across W. 11th St., before 1829 when New York’s grid street system was being implemented and the street was built cutting through it.

Every morning, when Edinger arrives at Congregation Shearith Israel, he sits down at his desk and begins checking his email. At 8:30, Sunday-Thursday, he co-hosts a morning learning group Zoom meeting for the congregation. Then, he begins the brunt of his work, the coordination of the congregation’s rituals and upkeep of religious spaces. This often means reviewing one, or many, of the thousands of documents the synagogue keeps, many of which are written and signed by Edinger’s very own grandfather. Just the other day as Edinger began planning a discussion on sacramental wine during prohibition era, he happened to look over a list of congregants who had purchased this wine through the synagogue and then noticed something not at all uncommon. His family members had been among those who had purchased the wine! “There are my relatives, right there on the books, like, hi!” Edinger said.

It was shortly after Edinger started as sexton that Marian Howard, the W. 11th St. Block Association Chair at the time, approached him about the cemetery in regard to its aesthetic design. The wall facing the street was painted a muddy green and had started to peel. According to Edinger, Howard was eager to make whatever changes possible, such as repainting and rebuilding. Edinger met with people to discuss upkeep of the wall and, in 2015, he hired Rachel Frankel Architecture to begin formally planning renovations.

In 2019, a woman parking on the side of W. 11th closest to the cemetery alleged that she thought she was hitting the gas to move forward before pummeling backwards into the cemetery wall and creating a massive hole in the structure. The synagogue covered the area with plywood and quickly got approval from the city to rebuild. Funds to begin construction were rapidly gathered from an anonymous donor interested in the upkeep of old cemeteries and construction began shortly thereafter. According to Rachel Frankel Architecture, construction was completed in 2022.

According to Edinger, the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation was the organization that was advocating for the opening of the cemetery to walking tours and the general public, or what the Congregation’s website defined as Stage II, but they haven’t provided Edinger with any updates. The Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation could not be reached for comment.

What Edinger seems most concerned about going forward is just doing right by the synagogue and its community. He loves the congregation and feels that his upbringing in it allows him to better connect with the motivation for its continuation. His wife though, who wakes to a panicked Edinger having just seen his passed grandfather, disagrees. “My wife would say I’m too close to it. It’s too much of my life,” Edinger said laughing.