A Remarkable Coincidence

Once in a while, I look at the program that tells me who is looking at my website, and, depending on the search engine, what they were looking for that brought them here.  I'm used to the searches for "can Jews own pets," and "source minhag break plate tna'im," which are all time favorites.  Of course, during wedding season everyone looks for speeches.  So it goes.  If I wanted popularity, I would say aim for the lowest common denominator and say something infantile.

But recently, I had a lot of hana'ah from a really strange coincidence.  There seems to be someone in Davao City, Philippines, that stops by here once in a while.  Sure, I get the occasional hit from Saudi Arabia, or Afghanistan, or Belize, but those are sporadic, and this one is pretty regular.  I was puzzled, because there doesn't seem to be any Jewish community there, certainly not organized.  So I figured this person might be an Israeli businessman, or a teacher at the med school there, or a mashgiach.  I still don't know.  But a few weeks ago, a woman that is a caregiver for a relative of mine went back to her home in the Phillipines for a while.  When she came back, she told me that she was in the Ninoy Aquino International Airport and she saw an Orthodox Jew at the airport boarding a Philippine Airlines flight- to Davao City!  He was walking into the plane, and she didn't have a chance to say hello to him, but I have a feeling that this was the guy that reads these posts.  Maybe I'm wrong, but if I'm right, that would be an amazing coincidence, on par with what happened to a friend of mine that attends my shiur.  He and his wife were with a private guide in Xian, China, at Emperor Qin's tomb, the one that is surrounded by thousands of life-like, full size terracotta figures.  He hears a voice saying "Mr. Ploni!  Mr. Ploni!"  It turned out that the son of a friend of his, who davens in the same shul, was there on a private tour at that moment.  This was not a Kosher tour, they were just two individuals, out of the seven billion human beings that currently inhabit this planet, that happened to run into each other on the opposite side of the world.  This is on the level of deciding to call a friend on the phone, closing your eyes and dialing at random, and getting the right number.  These stories teach us that 1. You ain't never out of the 'hood.  2.  For Orthodox Jews, there's no such thing as Derech HaTeva.