Stargazing in a Cemetery, Where It’s Dark and Quiet

Good morning. It’s Friday. Today we’ll look at amateur astronomers and a cemetery in Brooklyn that is giving them a permanent place to look up at the sky. We’ll also get details on a deal in Albany to weaken a law that mainly affects all-boys Hasidic Jewish schools, known as yeshivas.

“It seems incongruous, doesn’t it?” Julie Bose said. It was more of a statement than a question.

She was talking about how amateur astronomers set up telescopes in a cemetery — specifically, the cemetery she runs, the Evergreens, in Brooklyn. The astronomers like it there, and not just for the rolling hills and the architecture. (One of the architects of the former chapel that the cemetery uses for offices was Calvert Vaux, who is better known for designing Central Park with Frederick Law Olmsted.)

Mostly, the astronomers like that the Evergreens is dark. “You don’t have all the light pollution from the city,” said Bryanne Hamill, the chairwoman of the Amateur Astronomers Association of New York.

Now the cemetery is planning a $20 million center that can be used for what Bose called “celebrations of life” as well as community meetings and outside gatherings that do not involve funerals.

For the astronomers, there will be a separate observatory. The association said that a partnership with the cemetery would create “a permanent hub” for public stargazing and astronomy education. The association will outfit the observatory with telescopes and guidance systems. The group will provide the volunteer astronomers to lead educational programs.

Astronomy can be an expensive hobby. A portable telescope can cost nearly $20,000, and Hamill, a retired lawyer and Family Court judge, said that there were no public places in the city where people could go to look at stars through telescopes. The association members bring their own equipment to events at the cemetery, like the association’s Spring Starfest, which had been planned for tonight but was rescheduled for May 30 because clouds and rain were in the forecast.

As the association looked to make astronomy more accessible, the cemetery was looking for new ways to “make our place more open to the public,” Bose said. “Modern-day cemeteries are rethinking how they make connections to the community and try to continue to be relevant as we continue to honor the people who are buried here.”

In collaboration with the City Department of Veterans’ Services, the Evergreens started a landscaping training program for veterans who live in New York, with college-level courses and hands-on training by specialists from the Davey Institute, the nonprofit research arm of the Davey Tree Expert Company. Five people graduated last year, and two now work in Central Park, Bose said. Seven finished the program this year. She expects to sign up 10 more next year.

But the Evergreens is above all a cemetery. The African American performer Bill Robinson, known as Bojangles, is buried there. So is the etiquette arbiter Amy Vanderbilt. Yusef Hawkins, a Black teenager who was surrounded by white youths and shot to death in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn in 1989, is, too.

There are also several victims of the explosion of the General Slocum steamer in 1904, as well as a single grave for six from the Triangle Shirtwaist fire in 1911 who were not identified until a century later. And there is the grave of Anthony Comstock, a 19th-century postal inspector who led a push for a rarely enforced anti-vice law that has figured in recent court cases on abortion pills.

Like several other cemeteries in Brooklyn, the Evergreens was a Victorian creation. “Today we regard death much differently than the early Victorians who built these cemeteries,” Suzanne Spellen wrote in Brownstoner in 2020. “Life was hard for most people, life expectancies were much shorter in general, and for rich and poor alike, death could easily come from childbirth, disease, accident or war.”

Modern medicine and improved living conditions have “pushed death as far away as possible” now, she wrote, but “the Victorians embraced it as a part of life.”

“Funerals generally took place in the home, and burial in a beautiful park where one could visit, and even make a day of it, proved extremely popular,” she added. In those days Green-Wood Cemetery, a few miles from the Evergreens, was the No. 2 tourist destination in New York State, after Niagara Falls.

Hamill said she found it “poetic” to look at the stars in a cemetery, “appreciating that we are all born of stardust from exploding stars, and in cemeteries, we return to dust.”

“That puts life in perspective,” she said.

Weather

Expect some rain and possibly a thunderstorm, with the temperature reaching 63. The rain will continue into the evening, with clouds and a dip to about 53.

ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING

In effect until May 26 (Memorial Day).

The latest Metro news

“This is phenomenal”: Fans packed the street outside Madison Square Garden after the New York Knicks took an unlikely 2-0 lead over the Boston Celtics in the N.B.A. playoffs.
Tourism declines: Experts predicted a record year for tourism in New York City. But foreign visitors have declined since President Trump declared a trade war on allies, mused about annexing other countries and accelerated an immigration crackdown.
The noisy race for governor in New Jersey: With the largest field in decades, candidates must figure out how to make themselves heard against the backdrop of upheaval in Washington.
What we’re watching: On “The New York Times Close Up With Sam Roberts,” Clyde McGrady, a national correspondent for The Times, discusses Trump administration policies that threaten Black history museums as funding cuts loom. Also, Robin Pogrebin, a culture reporter, looks at arts institutions that fear speaking out, and Dean Chang, the Metro politics editor, discusses the race for mayor in New York. The program is broadcast on CUNY TV at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

Looking to 2026, Hochul pushed to weaken oversight of religious schools

Changing a century-old law that mainly affects all-boys Hasidic Jewish schools, known as yeshivas, has been a top priority among leaders of New York’s Hasidic communities, which tend to vote as a bloc.

Now Gov. Kathy Hochul is facing criticism over her efforts to weaken that law.

A proposal to water down the state’s oversight over religious schools was a last-minute addition to the state budget package. Hochul, looking ahead to what promises to be a tough re-election fight next year, was apparently looking to win over Hasidic Jews. The measure passed the Senate on Thursday and was sent to the Assembly, where it is also expected to be approved.

Education experts, including the chief of the State Education Department, have accused Hochul of seeking political support at the expense of children, as have some legislators and several members of the governor’s own staff. Betty Rosa, the state education commissioner, told The New York Times last week that the changes in the measure amounted to a “travesty” for children who attend religious schools that do not provide a basic secular education. This week, Rosa’s spokesman called the measure “interference.”

The push to adjust the rules for Hasidic schools, which collect hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars but sometimes do not provide a basic secular education, was led by Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie. His conference includes ultra-Orthodox and Hasidic legislators who are skeptical of any government involvement in their schools.

Support also came from non-Jewish legislators who represent parts of the lower and middle Hudson Valley, where Hochul and congressional Democrats will be fighting to stay in office next year. Any opportunity to court the Hasidic community, which tends to vote as a bloc, would improve Democrats’ prospects against Republicans, who have played to the Hasidic community’s increasing conservatism and support for President Trump.

Heastie characterized the measure as an effort to give religious schools various options for complying with state law. “It’s not a loosening,” he said. “We used a lot of the regulations that the State Board of Regents put in. It’s just allowing yeshivas and schools to get themselves in compliance.”

But Senator Liz Krueger, a Manhattan Democrat, described the measure with the changes as a “secretive backroom deal.” And Adina Mermelstein Konikoff, the director of Yaffed, a group supporting secular education in yeshivas, called the move “a direct assault on the futures of tens of thousands of Hasidic children.”

METROPOLITAN diary

Very Kind

Dear Diary:

I was in the audience for a performance of Rebecca Frecknall’s production of “A Streetcar Named Desire” at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

In the play’s final minutes, my heart was in my throat, and tears were flowing. In my clouded peripheral vision, I noticed a young woman next to me. Her shoulders were shaking softly as she wept. After the house lights came up and the ovation died down, I turn to her.

“Could I give you a tissue?” I asked.

“Yes, actually,” she said. “That’s very kind.”

I handed her a tissue.

“The kindness of strangers?” I said sheepishly, unable to help myself.

She took the tissue and blew her nose.

“Too soon,” she said.

— Deborah M. Brissman

Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.

Glad we could get together here. See you Monday. — J.B.

P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.

Stefano Montali and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at [email protected].

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