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ra etty Memoli and her son, Rod, with
Marcy Feldman at the Memoli home in
1980
The world gets smaller
with unexplained
coincidences.
Shelli Liebman Dorfman
Contributing Writer
The Liebman home
in Cleveland
B
eyond "Are you kidding me?"
and "It's such a small world!"
are discoveries of person-to-
person connections so astonishing
that they literally fall into the cat-
egory of Jewish geography — those
made because of where we are geo-
graphically and whom we meet.
On a recent Florida visit, my
family stopped at two restaurants
that happened to be closed and
then chose a place we had not
originally considered. There we
switched our table from inside to
outside and became engaged in
a remarkable encounter.
A woman parked her car,
got out, walked right up to
me and said, "I'm from
Cleveland. Can you tell me
about this restaurant?" I
told her I am originally
from Cleveland Heights.
She said that's where she
lives, too, and told me
her street name. I said, "I grew
up on that same street" Then she gave me
her address and I got chills. This woman
— Julie Leeson — whom I had never seen
before, who came specifically to me with
her question, lives in my house! She and her
husband are raising their children in the
house where I grew up!
Way more bewildering than the times
you mention someone's name and sud-
denly your phone rings and it's them are
the astonishing personal twists of fate that
keep you thinking, "What are the chances
that people unexpectedly connect at the
moment they do?"
Many think a coincidence is just that, a
remarkable circumstance occurring with-
out plan or expectation. But Rabbi Shneur
Silberberg, outreach director at the Sara and
Morris Tugman Bais Chabad Torah Center
in West Bloomfield, has a different take.
"In Jewish tradition, as highlighted by
Chasidic tradition, things happen for two
reasons," he said. "There is freedom of
choice and there is Divine providence, that
which is orchestrated by God. The choices
of right and wrong and good and evil, those
decisions are ours; that which happens
around us, however, which is not based on
the choices we made, is orchestrated by
Godly design. The person you random-
ly find standing next to you in line in the
supermarket is a person you are intended to
come across at this moment:'
Silberberg acknowledged this approach,
albeit difficult to believe at times, may lead
to unexpected and even amazing meetings
or connections, but said, "Whether we or
God choose our actions, there is no true
coincidence:'
VACATION CONNECTIONS
Still, consider this: Five thousand miles
from her home, Barbara Pollack's step-
grandmother discovered an eerily timed tie
to a woman she'd never met before.
"She was sitting outside at a cafe in Paris"
said Pollack of West Bloomfield. "Another
lady starts a conversation and asks, 'Where
do you live?' I live in California: my step-
grandmother says, and asks, 'Where do
you live?' The lady says, 'Detroit: My step-
grandmother says, 'I have a daughter in
Huntington Woods: The lady says, 'I live in
Huntington Woods; what's her name?' My
step-grandmother says, 'Florence Sol: The
lady's jaw dropped and she replied, 'She's
driving my carpool today."'
Randy Zdrojewski also had a back-home
experience during his travels. "My daughter,
Tam, and I were stuck in Bangkok during
the Thailand political turmoil in 2006" he
said. "Our driver put us on the phone with
an English-speaking expat he knew who
wanted to help us find a way to get home. I
told her where we were from and she said, 'I
used to live at Maple and Middlebelt!"' She
continued on page 12
10 November 26 2015