Rabbi Nachman's Radio: A Fable

Rabbi Nachman of Breslau was asked by the Miller, who was well verseS in Torah but knew nothing of Talmud, why does it say ''Elohim," the Holy One Blessed Be He, ' that is in the plural, I hear it "'-im'.' There are many Gods then? The birch-weavers and the pattern-cutters, the bird-chripping drunk who sleeps by the station and the rotten-touth fool from Chernobyl overheard and began to shout. "'We have worshipped Him for years as one - without ever listening to his name." They were all shouting at once, so loudly, that Rabbi Nachman could not understand their Yiddish. It sounded like Cossack howls or Romanian. "'Listen,"' Rabbi Nachman who always noticed the smallest thing even be it as tiny as a mite in a scroll, "'Listen." He spoke.

"'There are many voices of God, all speaking at the same time."' He bit his finger-nail. And ate a bit of the white bit. "'You hear one in one place, another over there, somtimes two or three. He is infitnite and we can hear so few of his voices, but to us it seems already like a infinity."
Eliezer Nachman, an electrician cum-Rabbi of the Hamburg Technical School, replied. "'It is like frequencies. Some have AM, they are on FM, it blurs in between. It is all." He sniffs a little. "'One white noise, though."

But nobody could understand how God was like a Radio. And the Jews all became confused. They talked and yapped, scrolled and torn pieces of each other hair out. Soon all of Volhynia and Podolia were infected by the disease. Beady men who had said "'Elohim" their whole lives ate bacon-sarnies on the Lower East Side and in Russia, where things are always different, a head-scarfed Rebbetzin pulled the wings off a butterfly. Now that was just unnecessary.