The political storm unleashed by Assemblyman Dov Hikind’s comment last week that police should target their searches using a “terrorist profile” had been played out mainly on the networks, in the newspapers, and on the steps of City Hall.

Yesterday, members of Reverend Al Sharpton’s National Action Network led a small protest outside Mr. Hikind’s office in Boro Park, in the heart of an Orthodox Jewish community.

The protest brought the conflict over racial profiling to the doorstep of the largely insular community.

Mr. Hikind has urged profiling that would single out these characteristics: “men, young, Middle Eastern or South Asian background.” The protesters were not young men of Arab background but black men and women of various ages, who said Mr. Hikind’s words were inflammatory, a reminder of the tensions between black and Orthodox Jews in the area since the Crown Heights riots of 1991.

Mr. Hikind said yesterday he “won’t deal” with Rev. Sharpton until his fellow Democrat apologizes for remarks he made during the riots of 1991.

The Sharpton group’s national field director, Kelvin Alexander, said Mr. Hikind’s comments “incite people” to violence.

“You begin to create opposition between people who look different,” Mr. Alexander said. “It’s extremely irresponsible.”

Rev. Sharpton’s absence from the march underscored that point, Mr. Alexander said. The founder of the National Action Network was scheduled to lead the protest but did not attend, with associates saying Rev. Sharpton was preoccupied instead with showing support for a black man, Alex Moore, who was badly beaten by a group of white men in the Flatlands neighborhood early Sunday.

A candidate for state attorney general, Charles King, who went to Boro Park in Rev. Sharpton’s place, criticized the efficacy of profiling as a law enforcement tool.

“It’s flawed, it doesn’t work, and you don’t employ those characteristics in a free country. You just don’t,” Mr. King said.

A member of Rev. Sharpton’s group, Cynthia Davis, reacted to Mr. Hikind’s proposal in more personal terms, using heated language. “My ancestors died and were lynched because of racial profiling,” Ms. Davis, who is the group’s crisis coordinator, said. “How dare he, how dare he suggest we racially profile any race, any race of people for any reason. That is an insult to humankind.”

Those words elicited a defensive stance from many in the conservative community, who stood silently to watch the small group of fewer than 10 protesters give interviews to reporters under the watchful eye of police.

Though he expressed support for Mr. Hikind’s call to give police freedom to use “terrorist profiling” to search subway riders, a local jeweler, Mark Katz, summed up the feeling in the community by saying, “We don’t want to make waves.” Other Jewish onlookers, who declined to be quoted by name, said Boro Park residents do not endorse singling out individual groups.

Mr. Hikind said yesterday that he has received overwhelming support from the local community and many outside it.

“Every police officer I’ve spoken to, every fireman I’ve spoken to, everybody in law enforcement says, ‘Right on,'” the assemblyman said.

His proposal, he said, would allow police officers to search individuals who fit a “terrorist profile” without police worrying whether they could be accused of searching people based on race and ethnicity, which is illegal in the city.