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Sound of mind and in good health, Goldstein was greeted by relatives and Jewish Agency and Absorption Ministry officials with her immigrant certificate in a ceremony at Ben-Gurion Airport.

Born in New York City 20 months before the First Zionist Congress in Basel launched the movement for political Zionism, Goldstein attended most of the Zionist Congresses since, including the pre-Holocaust 21st congress, in 1939, and the post-Holocaust 22nd, in December 1946, when American delegates were shocked by the decimated ranks of the European delegates.

For most of her life, she was active in American Mizrahi Women, serving as its president from 1942 to 1947. Mizrahi — now Amit Women — gave her a big sendoff in New York on Thursday of last week.

Since her first visit here in 1946, she has made more than 40 trips to Israel. During those trips, she's seen the state being built and visited her older daughter, Raisel Rauchwerger, who made aliyah from Brooklyn in 1946 with husband Leon.

Raisel, 74, a retired English teacher in Ramat Gan, lived for years in Kfar Batya, named for Zionist pioneer Bessie Gotsfeld, Goldstein's sister-on-law.

"She was always traveling around the country and various parts of the world for her Zionist activity," said Raisel.

Goldstein will be joining her daughter, Malka Goldfeld, who made aliyah in 1989 and lives in Kfar Gideon, near Afula.

Danny Tal, the Jewish Agency emissary in New York said that the daughter "has tried to convince [Goldstein] to move to Israel for the last five years."

He added that when the 73-year-old Goldfeld first approached him in November, "I thought the aliyah was for her. She said, `No, it's my mother.'"

Goldstein is the daughter of Leopold (Levi) Horowitz, one of four brothers and a sister who founded the Horowitz-Margareten matzah bakery on New York's Lower East Side in 1884. She's also a descendant of famed Rabbi Isaiah Horowitz, the 16th-century Shelah Hakadosh, who is buried in Tiberias right next to Maimonides.

Goldstein isn't the oldest person to immigrate to Israel. Two arrived from the former Soviet Union at the age of 111.