Love in Greece

In Jewish culture, באַשערט, or bashert, is the idea of finding your destined soul mate. Similar to the invisible string theory, meeting the love of your life is attributed to fate. People across time abandon mere coincidence as an explanation.

My grandparents, Dena and Leon Hilfstein, met in the summer of 1971, far from their hometowns. Originally from California and New York, the pair crossed paths in the beauty of Athens, Greece. And the rest was history.

Here is their story.

My grandmother, born Dena Foreman, grew up in San Diego, California, with her parents and one brother. When she was 19 and had completed her first year of community college, she decided to take a gap year. During this time, she travelled to Israel to work on a kibbutz for six months—a communal settlement founded on the principles of collective ownership that often produces specific foods and agricultural products. At the time, it was quite popular for college-aged Jews to travel to Israel for short-term stays to experience this way of life.

When the time finally came to leave Israel, Dena faced a choice: return straight to the comforts of home, or pick a place for an extended layover—little would she know it would change the course of her life. Because she had visited Greece as a young girl, she decided to head to Athens, accompanied by her friend Barb. Barb had planned to meet up with her boyfriend, Ray, when they arrived, so the three decided to spend time together. 

Since Ray owned a motorcycle, the plan was for Dena and Barb to fly, while he travelled to Greece by ferry. Once the ship docked in Athens, Ray went to retrieve his motorcycle from the cargo hold and struck up a conversation with a man who was doing the same. The two began talking, and the man mentioned he was looking for someone to explore Greece with. Ray told him he was meeting his girlfriend and her friend at a youth hostel and gave him the address. They agreed to meet the next day.

That man was Leon. 

Leon had grown up in the Bronx, a borough in New York City, and had recently graduated from the Manhattan School of Music, where he studied piano performance. Jewish and 24, it is not too surprising that he also spent a year in Israel living on a kibbutz. Having purchased a motorcycle during the trip, he planned to take a boat to Greece before making his way to Switzerland, where he would eventually fly home. This sequence of events brought Leon and Ray on the same boat for this fortuitous interaction. 

When Ray arrived at the youth hostel, he approached Dena with the idea of travelling with this newfound acquaintance. More specifically, he asked her if she would be interested in a group motorcycle trip around Greece. Although hesitant, Dena agreed. She had never met Leon before, but ultimately trusted Ray’s judgement and gave in to the allure of spontaneity. 

The next day, on May 5, 1971, Leon met Dena. When she saw him for the first time, he had long hair, motorcycle boots, and emerald green eyes. Later, she would discover that it was the boots that made him appear taller than her. Their introduction began with a single word, “Shalom.” 

“I thought I died and went to heaven,” Leon recounted when he first saw Dena.

And so, their great motorcycle adventure through Greece began. For the next five weeks, the group did what any young adults would. In every city they visited, they enjoyed the beautiful scenery and the magnetism of each other’s company. They stayed in Santorini for a week, skinny-dipping in the water and cooking their own food on the beach with a camping stove. At night, since they didn’t have tents, they would sneak into unfinished houses to sleep before they were eventually caught by local authorities and kicked out. This left them sleeping underneath the stars instead.

As their tans deepened, so did their feelings for each other. Dena had never been in a relationship before, but she knew that she had begun to like Leon’s charisma and respectful manners. Leon, on the other hand, seemed pretty enamoured from the very first meeting. They never spent a moment apart during this trip, starting as mere strangers and slowly becoming much more than that. 

Then they travelled through the mountains of Northern Greece, sampling different Greek liquors along the way. The group agreed that the Retsina wine possessed too much of a woody flavor, but the Ouzo spirit became a favorite (and bonus points—it was cheap too). They spent several days at the archaeological site of Delphi, which Greek mythology identifies as the home of the famed oracle that would tell prophecies from Apollo.

Later in the trip, the group crossed the border into Yugoslavia for lunch and almost became stranded in the country—they were denied at the border when trying to re-enter Greece because they were all missing several vaccines. Thankfully, Greek officials were able to immediately administer the shots at the border. A couple of hours later, they successfully re-entered the country. 

Soon enough, it was time for Dena to fly back to the United States, and the group made their way back to Athens. Before everyone went their separate ways, Leon told her that he wanted to travel out to California to see her again and meet her parents. Dena was slightly skeptical that he would keep his word, but she hoped it would be more than just a vacation fling. 

Fast forward to Aug. 1971. Leon travelled from New York to San Diego to stay with Dena and her family for two weeks. 

“Will you marry me someday?” Leon asked Dena at the end of the trip. 

“Sure. One day,” she replied.

This unofficial engagement marked the start of their long-distance relationship. Dena went back to community college, and Leon moved to Tallahassee, Florida, to begin his Master’s at Florida State University. For the next two years, they regularly wrote romantic love letters to each other. Finally, three years later, on July 3, 1974, Dena and Leon got married. Dena wore a crown of daisies, her favorite flower, and Leon had the traditional Jewish kippah on his head. Surrounded by friends and family, they professed their love and began the rest of their lives together. This July marks their 52-year anniversary. 

My grandparents’ story demonstrates the special nature of bashert and the unyielding strength of love. Finding your soul mate is discovering the other half of yourself that you never knew was missing. When I think about my own future, I hope to have the chance to experience a love story as exceptional as theirs.

Taylor Thorne ’28 (taylorthorne@college.harvard.edu) loves love.