Jeffrey Salkin/For ‘Religion News Service’

One of my adult students recently asked me, “You know how God spoke to Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Rebecca, Jacob, Moses, Isaiah, and the rest of the prophets? Why doesn’t God speak anymore?”

It is a truly good question. A quick answer: After Malachi, there was no more prophecy, and God stopped speaking. But the Talmud has a different answer: Even though Prophecy had ended by that time, the voice of God could sometimes speak to people in a bat kol, or a soft, quiet tone. God could speak to us in the voice of a young girl.

Which brings me to a great Jewish theologian. Some years ago in Hollywood, Florida, I was close to the family of 13-year-old Rebecca Adler. She became bat mitzvah under my tutelage, but for one exquisite moment, she became my teacher.

One day in our 7th-grade class, the kids were wondering aloud: “What would it be like if God could speak to us? Would it be all thunder and lightning, or even something more intense?”

In the midst of this conversation, Rebecca piped up and said, “Whenever we do a mitzvah, it is as if God is speaking to us.” Her words echoed one of the most important Jewish thinkers of modern times. The great theologian and social activist Abraham Joshua Heschel once said, “When we fulfill a mitzvah, God is revealed in our deeds; in the depths of our being, we perceive the Divine Voice.”

I first heard that teaching from a 13-year-old student, whose depth of faith could give shape to our own spiritual lives.