Rivka Ben-Ari remembers that Israel was a kinder, gentler place when she made aliya with her parents nearly 36 years ago.
People didn't know from cell phones, modern appliances, and fancy cars. The country wasn't awash in overdraft. Neighbors helped neighbors.
Forty-two residents lived in her family's apartment building in Jerusalem's Kiryat Moshe neighborhood. It was on the border of Jordan, with a "fantastic view" of Ramallah and no-man's land. When the Six Day War broke out, they taped all the windows and then spent many days together in the shelter.
"We were one big family," says Ben-Ari, a counselor at the Association of Americans and Canadians in Israel.
"To tell you the truth, I really, really long for those days when Israel was so different," she confides. "There wasn't the running after the money. It was the Israel where everyone wanted to help each other."
She, her husband, Yoni, and friends from their days as new immigrants recently spent a weekend in the Golan talking about the good old days. They shared memories of culture shock.
Ben-Ari, who arrived as a 17-year-old, told about taking a broken-down Egged bus from the marketplace on a Thursday. Passengers boarded with cages containing live chickens. One of the fowl got loose and sat on the seat next to her.
"That was really a trip. You don't see that in New York," exclaims Ben-Ari, who grew up in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn.
Another time she passed a clinic and saw patients streaming out with bandages. She inquired why. One man said he came in with a splinter, and they'd bandaged his whole arm. Ben-Ari says, chuckling, "They didn't skimp on gauze."
A BORN storyteller, she also has a knack for listening. She hears many tales from olim who drop by for guidance as they navigate problems in their new homeland.
The AACI serves English-speaking immigrants from North America to Australia. They include singles and families, veteran visitors, and starry-eyed first-timers.
"I see people who have never been here before and who want to stay in Israel," she says. "They want to give to Israel, not take from it.
"Then, I have people who are completely the opposite: What can Israel do for me?"
Some have planned their aliya well, others don't have any details in place. They just know the country exerts a pull on them. They'll worry about a job and a place to live later.
Ben-Ari says two types set themselves up for disappointment. "There are people who come here with very, very high expectations. They think they're coming to the land of miracles, and whatever they're schlepping here is just going to dissolve," she says.
The other type are the idealists, who hold in their mind's eye a picture of Israel as it was many years ago - the easy-going, neighborly, nonmaterialistic society.
From her five years' experience at AACI, Ben-Ari observes, "The most successful olim are people who stay in their natural-speaking environment."
For instance, if they attended a Conservative shul in the US, they do the same here.
They develop a comfort level associating with like-minded souls.
Also, those who come to Israel without leaving anything behind have an easier time adjusting than those who keep the door open to return. "They're going to go that extra mile to make it work here."
Families with teenagers often find the transition difficult. The youths face a new language and the challenge of breaking into a clique of friends.
Israel demands survival of the fittest, she notes.
Says Ben-Ari, "If you believe this is the place to be, you've got to take the good with the bad. It's like having a child."
SHE HAS four sons, aged 22 through 30. One married a Yemenite woman. Ben-Ari marvels at the mesh of cultures in Israel, and laughs about trying to learn the Yemenite step for her son's wedding.
The young couple have given her and her husband a grandchild. "That's this pisher," Ben-Ari says, displaying the picture on her desk.
Born Rivka Jerushalmy, she comes from a family of Talmudic scholars who would venture from their shtetl for pilgrimages to Jerusalem.
Ben-Ari says her father served as the first principal of the first Jewish day school in New York.
After she graduated from Yeshiva Flatbush High School, her parents packed up and put their Zionist principles into practice. When they made aliya in 1964, she knew Hebrew. She enrolled in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, because as a religious girl, she did not have to do compulsory military service.
A friend told her that Yoni Ben-Ari, a fellow student, wanted her phone number.
"My husband, Baruch Hashem, pooh, pooh, pooh, is a good-looking guy. It was very romantic. He'd come in his uniform with his gun. It was love at first sight."
Rivka Ben-Ari majored in English literature and minored in sociology, psychology, and political science. In college, she came out of her cocoon.
An only child, she had led a sheltered life in New York. "I knew my four blocks. That was it," she says.
For many years, she taught English in elementary and high schools, then worked at a retirement home and a home- care agency.
At the AACI, she can put her education and personal experience into play. As she says, "Once upon a time I was also a new immigrant."
Also, being a typical Jewish mother who jokes, "If I'm cold, you should cover yourself," she kvells about helping immigrants through the maze of aliya: landing an apartment, finding work, learning Hebrew, and creating a routine for themselves.
"Baruch Hashem, I feel it's a gift. I feel the reason I was put on Earth was to help people."
[Published in the Jerusalem Post, May 5, 2000]