The boys from Bunk Twelve were hiking way down a mountain trail. After awhile, they came to a clearing with sheer cliffs on either side.

"Sha-lom," shouted out Moshie.

"Shalom, Shalom," came the answer as Moshie's voice bounced back and forth from cliff to cliff. Soon the entire bunk was doing it. The valley became filled with the echoing of the campers' voices as each one tried out his vocal chords.

"Why do some echoes last longer than others?" Yossi asked his counselor, Mendy.

"It depends on how loudly you shout," Mendy explained. "Creating an echo is like throwing a ball against the wall; the harder you throw, the harder the ball bounces back. So, the louder you call out, the more powerful are the sound waves and the more powerfully they will bounce back when they meet something hard which they cannot penetrate. When the sound waves bounce back, they create an echo.

"Calling out in the mountains is liking throwing a ball in a ball court where you have one wall in front of you and one wall behind you. The ball will continue bouncing back and forth until its strength ebbs away. Here too, the voices continue to bounce from one cliff to another until they lose their strength. The stronger the voice, the longer it will continue to echo."

"Wait a minute," Yossi said. "In shiur, you said that when HaShem gave the Ten Commandments, He spoke and there was no echo. HaShem surely spoke very loudly. According to what you just explained, His voice should still be echoing throughout the world."

"Now, that's a question a talmid chocham would ask," Mendy replied, smiling. "But you forgot one thing. I said that sound waves bounce back when they meet something they cannot penetrate. Our chachomim explain that there was a miracle and HaShem's voice did not have an echo. It did not bounce away from the world. Instead, it sounded from one end of the world to the other, and the world absorbed HaShem's voice.

"When HaShem gave the Ten Commandments, He intentionally changed the rules of nature. His voice changed the world, making it ready to receive holiness. Ever since then, doing a good deed blends in with the nature of the world; it helps the world follow the voice of HaShem which it accepted at the time of the giving of the Torah."

"The same is true when we study the Torah. We are not just learning laws and ideas. We want the Torah to seep into us and be absorbed in our innermost selves, changing the way we think and feel. The Torah should not bounce back, away from us. It should become part of our nature."

(Adapted from Likkutei Sichos, Vol. IV, Parshas Vaes'chanan)