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You remember gid, the special Torah sewing thread which is made from tendons and glue?
Gid in Hebrew means a number of things. "Stringy bits," basically - "gid" as a non-specialist term includes tendons and ligaments, also veins, arteries, and nerves.
Keset ha-Sofer, our friend the sofrut rulebook, says that one probably shouldn't use the gid ha-nashe, the sciatic nerve, to sew Torahs, since we are forbidden to eat the sciatic nerve, and we don't make Torahs out of things we're forbidden to eat.
But gid is made from tendons! not nerves! right? Why would Keset even think that using the gid ha-nashe was even a possibility, when we don't use nerves, we use tendons?
I asked a medic friend.
Apparently tendons and ligaments are best because they have oodles of collagen in them. Collagen is fairly bouncy stretchy stuff even when it's dried out, so tendons are good and flexible and make a good thread. Veins, arteries, and nerves aren't built like that, so when the component cells die the strings go brittle, and wouldn't be much use for sewing. However, the gid ha-nashe is enormous; apparently bovine ones have about the same diameter as a US dime. Any nerve has a bit of connective tissue in it, and a huge nerve like this might have just about enough to make a rather inferior sewing thread, if you shored it up with a lot of glue. So, you could make a thread out of the gid ha-nashe if you were determined.
Looks like Keset was associating by words - ("This sewing stuff is called gid, I wonder if it has anything to do with that other thing called gid that we know from kashrut") - rather than by practicalities ("Oh look, you can make a thread out of this whopper of a nerve, I wonder whether one can use it on a Torah").
So there you go. :)
Gid in Hebrew means a number of things. "Stringy bits," basically - "gid" as a non-specialist term includes tendons and ligaments, also veins, arteries, and nerves.
Keset ha-Sofer, our friend the sofrut rulebook, says that one probably shouldn't use the gid ha-nashe, the sciatic nerve, to sew Torahs, since we are forbidden to eat the sciatic nerve, and we don't make Torahs out of things we're forbidden to eat.
But gid is made from tendons! not nerves! right? Why would Keset even think that using the gid ha-nashe was even a possibility, when we don't use nerves, we use tendons?
I asked a medic friend.
Apparently tendons and ligaments are best because they have oodles of collagen in them. Collagen is fairly bouncy stretchy stuff even when it's dried out, so tendons are good and flexible and make a good thread. Veins, arteries, and nerves aren't built like that, so when the component cells die the strings go brittle, and wouldn't be much use for sewing. However, the gid ha-nashe is enormous; apparently bovine ones have about the same diameter as a US dime. Any nerve has a bit of connective tissue in it, and a huge nerve like this might have just about enough to make a rather inferior sewing thread, if you shored it up with a lot of glue. So, you could make a thread out of the gid ha-nashe if you were determined.
Looks like Keset was associating by words - ("This sewing stuff is called gid, I wonder if it has anything to do with that other thing called gid that we know from kashrut") - rather than by practicalities ("Oh look, you can make a thread out of this whopper of a nerve, I wonder whether one can use it on a Torah").
So there you go. :)
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