The word is “beshert.” It’s a Yiddish term, which loosely translated means “soulmate” or “destiny.” The word is perhaps the best one to describe what happened on a recent Saturday afternoon in Boynton Beach in Florida.

Phyllis Felsenfeld and Elaine Wyler, who were close friends in elementary school at P.S. (Public School) 130 in Brooklyn from 1945 to 1949, reunited for the first time in 73 years.

“It’s amazing,” Elaine said. “I’m still in a daze.”

Beshert also best describes the initial June 2020 meeting between Phyllis’ and Elaine’s grandchildren, Alex Horowitz (Phyllis’ grandson) and Carly Gorodetzky (Elaine’s granddaughter), who will be married in January. They were set up on a date because Alex’s parents happened to move into a neighborhood near Carly’s father’s childhood best friend. And although Alex and Carly have known each other for more than a year, it wasn’t until recently that they discovered their grandmothers were close friends as children.

And beshert describes another amazing tidbit that was just revealed: Elaine and Phyllis, both 87, were born two days apart. Elaine (whose maiden name is Lowin) turned 87 on March 10; Phyllis (Kamil), March 12.

Their reunion, which took place at Alex’s parents’ house, featured hugs, tears, laughs and reminiscing.

Phyllis said she and Elaine would play jacks, pickup sticks and punch ball at school, among other childhood games. After school they’d hang out at each other’s houses. They recalled the roller-skating rink near the school.

Recollections were sparked by a class photo and Phyllis’ school album, filled with signatures and well wishes.

“Not everybody saves these things,” she said.

On one of those pages was a poem Elaine wrote to her good friend:

“We had some fun,

We laughed a lot,

And, oh, the trouble in which we got.

And now that we must go away,

I hope I see you again some day.

Love & luck,

Elaine Lowin”

Carly’s parents, Jeffrey and Shari Gorodetzky, were at the reunion along with Alex’s parents, Craig and Bonnie Horowitz, plus other family members. Everyone was moved, but the stars of the show were most affected.

“You remember this,” Phyllis said to Elaine as she showed her a picture. “This is when we were really best friends.”

Elaine nodded, later quipping with a smile, “I’m starting to feel old.”

The reunion was mind-­blowing for the two families. It turns out Elaine and Phyllis unknowingly reared their children a few minutes apart. Elaine lived in the Oyster Bay section of Long Island, while Phyllis lived in Jericho.

Now they live 20 minutes apart in Florida, Elaine in Boca Raton and Phyllis in Tamarac.

Alex and Carly owe their own introduction to one of the many coincidences of the friends’ story.

Carly came to Florida from New York City during the COVID-19 lockdown in 2020 to stay with her parents. She needed a brief change of scenery. A few years earlier, Alex’s parents befriended a neighboring couple in their community in Boynton Beach. It turns out the man was the lifelong best friend of Carly’s dad.

“My parents, who are typical Jewish parents, kind of talked about their single son with their neighbor a million times,” said Alex.

The neighbors told Alex’s parents they knew a single woman who had just come down from New York, and that perhaps they should get Alex and the woman together. The two ending up going on a date, and now they’re engaged.

Their grandmothers’ reunion began when Alex and Carly paid a visit to Carly’s grandmother Elaine. She talked about growing up in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn and attending Erasmus Hall High School, sparking Alex’s curiosity. He knew his grandmother Phyllis also grew up in Flatbush and attended Erasmus Hall.

He decided to call Phyllis, and asked whether she knew Elaine Lowin.

“As soon as he said, ‘Elaine Lowin,’ I said, ‘Are you kidding?!’ That was one of my four best friends in elementary school,” Phyllis said.

That’s when the couple decided to put Phyllis and Elaine on a FaceTime call.

“It was very emotional,” Alex said. “I was almost coming to tears myself.”

Next, they decided to get the old friends together for a face-to-face meeting. The women hope it’s the first of many.

What’s amazing is that if Alex and Carly hadn’t visited Elaine and put the pieces together, it’s likely the women would have attended their grandkids’ wedding, been introduced as Phyllis Felsenfeld and Elaine Wyler, and never known they were close childhood friends.

It’s beshert.

“I really do believe that this is that,” Carly said. “It’s a ‘meant to be’ type of thing.”