A funny thing happened last May.

My son, who was about to head down to New Jersey to see his girlfriend, had a package delivered from Fanatics. I think he was umpiring a Little League game, so I just let him know it had arrived. Later, when I asked him what it was, he gave me an odd look and casually let me know it was a Mets hat.

In response to my obvious question of “Why?” he rationally made the case that, as a lifelong Red Sox fan, in the interests of self-preservation, it made more sense to wear a Mets hat in New York than a Sox hat. Having lived through my own youthfully exuberant and naïve wearing of a Sox jersey and hat into the bleachers of Yankee Stadium in 1994, and again in the far reaches of the left field upper deck at Game 2 of the 1999 ALCS, I can confirm that both times were stupid ideas. If you were there with me, you know what I mean.

In those days, the mostly good-natured ribbing of, but occasional hostility toward, Red Sox fans by New Yorkers was still rooted in grudging acceptance. We were the lovable losers, the annoying little brother who just merited an occasional smackdown. My hat may have been stolen, but it was eventually given back. A female Sox fan may have been told, “Go back to Salem, you witch,” but was that for real? I didn’t really fear for my life, though I never truly stress-tested it. Four championships this century have put most of that to bed, but it still doesn’t make it wise to be an obvious Sox fan on the 4 or the 7 Train.

To be fair, my son’s Mets hat was not a Tennessee-Orange-level escalation. To appropriate another saying, some of my best friends are Mets fans, and I’m not lying, but it is a tad unnatural. That said, Mets fans are generally too busy nursing their own heartbreak to pick fights with Bostonians. The ghosts of 1986 were exorcised long ago, and now I feel bad for them in the way I used to feel bad for Cubs fans.

Long story short: He wore that hat happily on that trip and to his first game at Citi Field, and we all moved on.

Having made peace with this concept, imagine my surprise when, in the pictures we received about six weeks later from Birthright, the aforementioned Sox fan still had his Mets hat on in just about every shot. That defies explanation. Is a Red Sox hat not safe to wear in Israel? Based on personal experience, there’s no risk in that at all. I guess I’ll just chalk it up to true love, or something, and continue to look the other way when I see it. After all, it could have been worse. Way worse. Yankees-hat worse.

Fast forward to this month, when what feels like an inevitable slide toward this kid going off into the big, bad world took another step with a move to Lower Manhattan for law school. We dropped him off joyfully, spent a few days doing the New York thing, and yes, we even went to a Mets game and cheered Pete Alonso setting the team’s all-time home run record. It was nice. My son wore his Mets hat, but that’s a bridge I’ll never cross with him; I wore a Bedford hat.

To be calm and rational about the whole thing, it’s fair to say that New York is great. I love going there, there’s always something to do, the MTA is (sorry) infinitely better than the T, and it feels so…relevant and cool at all times. I’m looking forward to being down there a lot more for the next few years. But how much Boston am I willing to project? A Celtics jersey at MSG? No. A Bruins sweater at a Rangers game? Nope. A Sox hat on the 1/9 train heading uptown? Probably.

Adjacent to this risk analysis, if we’re really willing to call it that, is the unfortunate necessity to weigh the same pros and cons of being visibly Jewish these days in public. Do I wear the hostage necklace or the Magen David outside my clothing? Usually. Sometimes. Do I wear a Hebrew-t-shirt around town? I do. Do I wear my Hanukkah socks year round? Somehow, yes, but only because I don’t have other Jewish socks.  Do I wear the Israel baseball sweatshirt out as much as I used to? Absolutely not.

How about in New York? This week I heard Hebrew everywhere I went — on the Staten Island Ferry, on the Brooklyn Bridge, in the hotel café at breakfast — and saw Jews with kippot on seemingly every corner. New York still feels like it has good Jewish genes (and please don’t cancel me for saying that).

New York was always Jewish, or Jewish enough. Bagels, deli, “Seinfeld,” seminaries, Harry Burns (who was so obviously Jewish, but it was never actually stated in the movie), Citi Field’s incredible array of kosher food options — and on and on. When I went to New York, and when I go to New York, it feels like, and verifiably still is, the center of American Judaism, a deep blue wall of Jewish life and culture. Of the world’s 16 million Jews, 2 million live in the New York/New Jersey metro area — the second-largest Jewish community in the world after Tel Aviv.

And yet, even in this city that feels so unmistakably Jewish, I can’t quite shake the calculation — the same one my son made swapping his Sox hat for a Mets one. It’s not about rivalries anymore; it’s about risk. The question isn’t just whether someone will give me grief for what I’m wearing, but whether someone will see me as a target for who I am. That change is subtle, but it’s profound.

Make no mistake: Sands are shifting. And if you’ll allow me to take dramatic liberties with an old song: If it can happen in New York, it can happen anywhere. (Sorry, Old Blue Eyes.)

It’s one thing to hide your sports loyalties to avoid a little trash talk on the subway or in a stadium. It’s another to tuck away a Star of David or an Israel sweatshirt because you’re not sure if today is the day someone’s glare escalates into something worse.

I hate that this calculus even exists. I hate that our heritage now feels like something we have to negotiate with the world around us, let alone our right to exist. Which, for us and us alone, is somehow still up for debate.

Maybe that’s why the Mets hat stayed on his head in Israel. Maybe it was habit. Maybe it was love. Or maybe it was an instinct we’ve both inherited: knowing when to blend in, even when we wish we didn’t have to. The Red Sox cap can, and does, come back out in the right place and time.

I just wish the same were true for every symbol of being Jewish.

And while New York still feels like a reasonably good place to be openly Jewish, it’s nothing to be taken for granted. So, from this Bostonian: New York, don’t ever change.

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