Excerpt:
Many people know that Jews blow the shofar, or ram's horn, on the holy days of Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur. Less well-known is the custom of blowing the shofar at the end of the daily morning prayer service for the month preceding the High Holy Days to provide a warning that the days of judgment are coming. These days New York Jews sense a different kind of warning.
When I was growing up in Queens in the 1970s, about 2,000 Jews would worship on Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur at my synagogue, the Hollis Hills Jewish Center. The back doors to the main sanctuary would be open, and the banquet hall behind it would be filled with seats, going all the way up to the stage at the end of the room. If there were police outside, they were there only to direct traffic, not to provide protection from any kind of "hate crime," a term that didn't exist yet.