Rose, one of my many great-aunts, lived in NYC most of her adult life because she loved it there.

When I was in my twenties, and Rose was in her eighties (spry eighties, like all the women in my family), she was mugged twice in the course of six months. The second mugging required her to spend several days in the hospital.

Frantic family members urged Rose to move back to the small city where she grew up and where two of her sisters still lived. She could move into the apartment with them, people said. She would be safe, people said. They could take care of each other, people said. So, tired and shaken and feeling a little old, she did.

It took her one week to remember how much she enjoyed the bustle of NYC, of which her small, moribund home town could not even offer a pale imitation. It took her two weeks to remember that she didn't get along with her sisters when they were all young, and age had made them all more irascible. Then, at the end of the month, she went out to cash her Social Security check, and was mugged on the railroad tracks next to the Marine Midland Bank in the middle of uptown in broad daylight.

Rose called the family together after returning from the police station and announced that, since she was going to be mugged anyway, she might as well be mugged in the city she loved. She took back her apartment from the people who were subletting it and moved back. When the family said it was unsafe, she sent them the receipt for the mace she started carrying in her pocketbook.

My father laughed when he talked about this, though never when my mother (Rose's niece) was in the room. "Live where you need to live," he said. "If you don't live in your true place because you're afraid, it won't make you safe. It'll only make you bitter."

The people who died because they were studying in Israel were in their true place. The fault doesn't lie with them, even though those whose true place is not Israel might think it is. Nor does the fault lie with their families, who understood the need to be in one's true place despite the anxiety this caused them. The fault lies with the people who killed them.

The killers killed wantonly in a place of peace and learning. They have not extinguished either, but have shown themselves to be friends of violence and ignorance.

Mary Anne