And there I was, in Williamsburg Brooklyn, early Friday evening and the sirens started. I wondered if it was the end of the world… you never know.. so I looked it up.
This is from:GOTHAMist:
“If you’re ever in Williamsburg ten minutes before the sun sets on a Friday night, you’ll have heard the eerie sirens that wail far and wide throughout the neighborhood. It isn’t a test or drill, it’s the warning that Shabbat will be starting soon, and it’s time to go home (if you’re Orthodox Jewish).
It’s not just one siren, but several, installed on different Yeshivas in South Williamsburg, a neighborhood that’s predominantly ultra-Orthodox Jewish. The sirens are controlled independently, which is why they can sound overlapped and echoed. The Torah says that the start of Shabbat is announced with the blowing of a “shofar,” a ram’s horn. The noises you hear are from STH-10 model mechanical sirens… close enough. I found two of them: one on 152 Rodney Street and one on 163 Clymer Street, and was surprised at how far south they were. They’re easily heard as far up as Greenpoint.
These things are loud . In 2004, a Yeshiva in Midwood, on Avenue N, received five noise code violations from the Environmental Protection Department for their siren, the Daily News reported. Technically, the city exempts religious institutions from this code, but neighbors complained that the volume was too extreme. The noise decibel level accepted by the city is 45 decibels, and the yeshiva’s siren was at 127. In the end, they agreed to lower it. In particular, war veterans were most agitated by the noise, which reminded them of another time in New York’s history when sirens blared weekly.”
So there is was, not the end of the world, but the beginning of the Sabbath! Rather like the church bell effect better