Boston bombing reveals a new American maturity toward insecurity

"Boston has rebalanced that debate a little," he adds. "This is still an issue that is a challenge."

He and others don't expect the pendulum to swing back to post-9/11 highs. Rather, they see a new equilibrium developing that puts the persistent threat of terrorism in a more realistic context.

"This is not a war. This is more like crime – we're going to manage it, not eliminate it," says LaFree. "So let's put it in with crime [as a priority] as opposed to putting it on a 'wartime footing.' "

Terrorism tinges daily decisions

In the Israeli town of Sderot, situated within rocket range of the Gaza Strip, terrorism took the form of a quasi-war with Palestinian neighbors. Yet the lessons learned there daily are not so different from those learned on Boston's Boylston Street at 2:50 p.m. on April 15.

At first the rockets were crude and the attacks intermittent, but by 2006 as many as 80 rockets a day were falling on the town. With Sderot only a half mile from the Gaza border, citizens have just 15 seconds' warning. During such escalations, mothers in Sderot would debate whether to put seat belts on their children, because it often took more than 15 seconds to unbuckle them and get to the nearest shelter. If they were caught outside, the mothers would lie on top of their children to protect them.

Yet thanks in part to how the community has rallied together, home prices in Sderot have increased 200 percent during the past four years – a spike nearly four times greater than the national average, driven in part by young couples looking to settle here, says Kfir Asulin in the local Re/Max office.

Moreover, the local Sapir College has more than doubled its enrollment and is now the largest public college in Israel.

"They wanted to turn Sderot into a ghost town.... Our answer was not to run away, but to build," says Mechi Fendel, a computer programmer whose husband founded an ever-expanding yeshiva (a college for Judaic studies) that proudly displays on its roof an enormous menorah made from Qassam rockets.

Like others, she cites faith as a pillar of her strength. "Spiritually we're alive and well and nothing is going to stop us."

Some 15 percent of the population suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder. But Ms. Fendel says that by dealing with the persistent attacks in a "normal, intelligent" way, her seven children have been able to remain calm and help others. At age 13, when her daughter was hosting a day camp during Passover, she successfully ushered 25 toddlers into a bomb shelter when the siren went off.

Those too old or infirm to sprint to one of the concrete bus stops along Sderot's palm-lined streets in the case of a rocket attack often choose to stay home near the safety of the bomb shelters that nearly every building in the city has. During the latest escalation, in November 2012, the nonprofit Reut Sderot Association called every family – many of which were missing men who had been called up for reserve duty – and helped those who needed it with grocery shopping and other chores.

"Being part of a community is very helpful," says Odelia Ben Porat, a mother of five who works with Reut and moved to Sderot in 2006, just weeks before a major escalation that caused her and her husband to seriously consider leaving. "I think that's the reason we decided to stay after all."

Reflecting on Israel's lessons in fighting terrorism, Yossi Klein Halevi, a senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, says: "If America is really going to deal with terrorism in an effective long-term way, it has to be with quiet determination."

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