Steve Accardi recently brought his car to a muffler shop in Jerusalem for a little maintenance.

When he got there, recalls Accardi, a 45-year-old psychologist who moved to Israel three summers ago from Monsey, N.Y., he saw the shop's proprietor, a tough, secular-looking guy, barking orders at his employees.

A few minutes later, Accardi says, "I went back to his office, and he's got all these pictures of rabbis all over the place. He says, 'I'm a famous chazzan in the Syrian community,' " using the Hebrew word for "cantor." "And he owns this muffler place!

"This is one of those everyday occurrences that make me smile and shake my head and say, Wow, classic Israel."

The "only-in-Israel" story is a popular genre among olim, or immigrants, like Accardi. They often revolve around a stranger's kindness, a chance encounter with a long-lost friend or an outward appearance that proves the opposite of the underlying truth.

Though terrorism is a topic that's front and center in Israeli newspapers, only-in-Israel stories don't often touch on that subject. Asked whether terrorism affected their decisions to move to Israel, almost everyone interviewed for this article said no.

"The world should be very, very well aware" of terrorism "everywhere in chutz la aretz," or outside of Israel, says Accardi, whose wife has given birth to two children since the couple made aliyah. "People should be feeling very, very unsafe."

Israel, he adds, "is the safest place to be. This is the land that Hashem watches year round."

Accardi came with his wife, Esther, on the first flight sponsored by Nefesh B'Nefesh, a private organization that helps North American Jews make aliyah.

The group since has chartered numerous planes. On July 12, Nefesh B'Nefesh and its partner, the Jewish Agency for Israel, brought over two planes carrying some 500 olim in the largest single-day aliyah from North America in Israel's history. In late July, about 200 North American immigrants came on another Nefesh flight.

Three further flights are expected to arrive by Sept. 7. Nefesh B'Nefesh says one or two flights are also possible this winter.

Nefesh B'Nefesh and the Jewish Agency for Israel say they expect 3,200 North American immigrants this year, the first time since 1983 that the figure has topped 3,000. That will bring the number of North American olim to more than 6,700 since Nefesh B'Nefesh began operating in 2002.

The increasing number of North Americans is seen as a great success in Israel, since they're often financially and socially comfortable at home and generally have been harder to attract on aliyah than Jews from other parts of the world.

Tali Berman, who made aliyah two years ago with her husband, Joshua, and the couple's young daughter, chose to live in a moshav village, which shares some similarities with a kibbutz, rather than in a city. They don't take public buses, which have been frequent targets of Palestinian suicide bombers.

"We've created a bubble we feel safe with," says Tali Berman, 29. "The reality is, there's nowhere in the world that's safe right now."

Still, Berman says, when she gave birth to a son nine months ago, the matzav, or security situation, did come to mind.

"There was a bit of a difference when we gave birth to a boy," she says. "We realized that having a boy serve in the army is different" than having a girl serve. Boys, who serve longer than girls, also are much more likely to end up in combat situations.

But the main surprise she's faced since making aliyah is just how smoothly the process has gone.

Shortly after arriving, Berman, who brought a unique approach to working with autistic children, was the subject of an article in an Israeli newspaper. The family of an autistic child saw the piece and contacted her.

Through referrals, the nonprofit organization that Berman founded now works with six or seven families.

Joshua Berman, 30, works for an Internet business that sells kitchen hardware. Because the company is based in the United States, he keeps U.S. business hours, despite the seven-hour time difference.

"I imagined moving here to be a lot more complicated, bureaucratic, a lot more waiting in line just for them to tell you they're closed," Tali Berman says. "I've been really amazed at how simple things have been. Of course, I'm saying that after it took me three days to get an Internet connection."

The Bermans also arrived on a Nefesh B'Nefesh flight.

"We just work on it really, really hard," says Nefesh B'Nefesh spokesman Charlie Levine. "We have identified where the pitfalls" of aliyah are, "and that's exactly the places we've tried to bolster, to build bridges over."

It seems to be working. Nefesh says that more than 99 percent of the North Americans they've brought on aliyah have remained in Israel.

"As recently as 15 years ago, it was well known that it was 50 percent for Americans," he says, though he acknowledges that the retention rate still could drop over time.

Nefesh says that 94 percent of its family units — either a single oleh or a family of olim — have at least one member employed.

Last year, 70 percent of North American olim who came over with Nefesh B'Nefesh called themselves Orthodox. Fifteen percent said they were Conservative, 10 percent said they were Reform and the rest were secular or unaffiliated.

For many years, the Jewish Agency was the sole organization providing aliyah services. Recent partnerships with foreign groups like Nefesh B'Nefesh and France's Ami represent a shift for the organization.

Furthermore, the agency says, except for Jews from Ethiopia, Jews no longer are driven to Israel by fear or necessity, but rather come by choice. That has forced the agency to shift its emphasis from aiding Jews in danger to convincing comfortable Jews to make their homes in Israel.

"It's a pretty big, dramatic turning point for the Jewish Agency," the agency's spokesman Yarden Vatikay says. "In this sense, we have to make much more focused efforts to attract various kinds of people who want to make aliyah."

Nevertheless, even those making aliyah by choice are often prompted to do so by social or political realities at home. Accardi, for one, points to an incident on Sept. 11, 2001, that set in motion his family's move to Israel.

As he was leaving his apartment complex about an hour after terrorists flew hijacked planes into the World Trade Center, the driver of a passing car noted Accardi's yarmulke and shouted, "Die!"

Accardi says he made a U-turn and chased the man down, shouting at him and pounding on his windshield until he opened the window.

"He said, 'I want you people out of my country. You caused this,' " Accardi recalls. "After I smashed him in the face, he took off. I stood there shocked by what I had heard. An hour after Arab terrorists hit us with a direct assault on the U.S.!

"If this guy can think this, how many thousands and thousands of others are thinking the same thing?" he asks. "That was the catalyst."

Karen Brunwasser, who is originally from Philadelphia, made aliyah in July. The night she arrived, she was interviewed on a prime-time Israeli television news program.

Since then, she says, "I've been walking down the street and people are saying, 'Weren't you on the news? Welcome to Israel!' "

"This is like red-carpet aliyah," she says. "Other people said to me, 'When I made aliyah, they disinfected me and put me in a transit camp.' When I made aliyah, the prime minister came to greet me at the airport!"

Now that's an only-in-Israel story.

This story reprinted courtesy of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

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