All the world's a radio!

Pirkei Avot is built on metaphor, simile, analogy -- which is why it's such fun to come across short, sweet articles like this one ("Radios and Judaism" by Karen Kaplan, on Chabad.org). 

In Pirkei Avot Shimon HaTzaddik says that the world stands on three pillars: Torah, avodah (prayer) and gemilut chassadim (acts of kindness). Just as a radio is only a silent box until it’s turned on and receiving signals, so the world seems spiritually silent to us without these three pillars. The first pillar, our holy Torah, is the detailed instruction manual for building and operating our radio. When we study the Torah, we transform ourselves into human radios to receive G‑d’s wisdom. That wisdom is also expressed in the Torah. So the Torah is both the instruction manual and the broadcast!

Dialling in and turning up the volume correspond to gemilut chassadim and avodah. A nice, thought-provoking set of imagery -- though certainly not one that would have occurred to Shimon HaTzaddik!