G emara (Sanhedrin 39a) relates that a heretic once approached Rabban Gamliel and said “I know how many stars there are in the heavens.” The great sage responded “Tell me how many molars and teeth are there in your mouth?” At that the heretic put his hand into his mouth and began counting. Rabban Gamliel had been waiting for that: “What is in your mouth you don’t know but what’s in the heavens you do know?”

That gemara came to mind recently when I read news reports about the discovery by medical researchers of a new organ — the 79th one — in the human body called the mesentery. In simplified terms the mesentery consists of a folded-over sheet of connective tissue called peritoneum that holds the intestines in place in the abdominal cavity.

Now this finding the result of detailed microscopic and electron microscopic examinations by colorectal surgeon J. Calvin Coffey and his research team at Ireland’s University of Limerick isn’t quite as dramatic as it sounds. In other words it’s not as if for decades doctors doing CT scans have noticed the mesentery hanging around inside people but wrote it off as maybe a sponge left inside the last time a patient had surgery. Discover magazine explains:

While anatomists knew it was there it was always thought to be composed of several different segments as opposed to being one single structure. This knocked it out of contention for organ status as our bodily organs must be continuous as well as provide some vital function to our anatomy.

The new study… reveals that the mesentery is actually one single band of tissue beginning at the pancreas and continuing down through the small intestine and colon wrapping around these vital organs to hold them tight and help them maintain their structure.

Humble as the mesentery may be next to the heart and brain the fact is according to Dr. Coffey that without it a person can’t live. And the mesentery’s new classification as an organ is more than a matter of mere nomenclature. The knowledge that it is a single continuous structure has enabled significant advances in colon and rectal surgery and could be important for a deeper understanding of diseases like Crohn’s and irritable bowel syndrome.

Why did Rabban Gamliel bother to respond to the heretic whose boast about knowing the count of the stars above might have been pompous but doesn’t seem to raise a challenge to Torah beliefs? Perhaps Rabban Gamliel’s point was that what underlies much of heresy is simple arrogance.

The more one knows just how much he doesn’t know — even about what’s going on within his own gut not to mention in the innumerable galaxies in the distant heavens — the more humble he will be. And as a result the less likely he will be to act as a know-it-all about matters of spirituality of the soul and of G-d which are even further beyond his ken than the observable facts of the material world. And the humility such recognition fosters also has another more subconscious effect: The less a person’s ego balloons to fill all available space in his world the more room there is into which G-d’s presence can enter.

There is an unspoken but palpable hubris underlying so much of what one reads in the media about scientific exploration as if it’s just a matter of time before man will have conquered the universe in toto. Yet as we launch ever more sophisticated probes into outer space there’s a body part called the mesentery located millimeters from our noses about which so much was and remains unknown.

Even with the mesentery’s structure now clarified lots more remains as yet hidden. The Coffey team’s report in The Lancet notes that the “functional unit of the mesentery is unknown and whether a distinctive cell type is primarily responsible for its functionality should be investigated.” The researchers write that it’s still unknown whether the organ belongs to the intestinal vascular or endocrine systems or another one altogether and whether it might also regulate the migration of white blood cells throughout the intestines.

All this seems to give new meaning to the phrasing in the brachah of asher yatzar acknowledging that the workings of the body’s internal organs are “revealed and known before Your Throne of Glory.” Apparently not even in our vaunted age of digital imaging and microsurgery has everything about our own bodily organs become “revealed and known” to us mortals.

SHARE THE WEALTH

What gives Columbus Ohio its star on the Chofetz Chaim’s proverbial celestial map is to my mind not its status as the Ohio state capital nor even its proximity to the growing frum communities of Cleveland and Cincinnati but its community kollel. Housed in spacious quarters staffed by a cadre of young idealistic talmidei chachamim and headed by a first-rate Torah presence Rabbi Henoch Morris its mission is high-level Torah learning supplemented by community outreach.

One of the Columbus Orthodox community’s most admirable features is the excellent relationship that exists between the kollel and the local shuls and their rabbanim. Spending a week in the city recently on the occasion of a family simchah meant enjoying lots of quality time in the community kollel’s beis medrash and one evening there I listened in to a dialogue between Rabbi Avi Goldstein of Beth Jacob Congregation and his chavrusa.

Speaking with me afterwards Rabbi Goldstein mentioned that his session that evening was the result of a Shabbos last year at Beth Jacob that featured the Traveling Chassidim imparting their trademark Jewish inspiration through Torah and song. His chavrusa was a mostly nonpracticing Israeli fellow for whom that Shabbos was a great inspiration and the beginning of an increased Jewish commitment. He remarked to the rabbi that were he back in Israel he’d never have come near these folks yet here he was dancing to their hartzige niggunim with a borrowed shtreimel on his head.

Hearing of another success of the Traveling Chassidim reminded me that when the troupe first went on the road years ago I’d had the thought that there was probably a need for a similar ensemble this one comprised of non-chassidish Yidden — the Meandering Misnagdim the Mobile Mussarniks or perhaps the Peripatetic Perushim?

Undoubtedly the very exoticism of the chassid can sometimes work in his favor in helping to lower the defenses of fellow Jews. The subconscious feeling on the latter’s part might just be that “he is so dissimilar so ‘outlandish’ that I need not make comparisons to him in which I come up Jewishly short.” He triggers no guilt trips and thus enables other Jews to simply enjoy his company as a nonthreatening cross-cultural experience — until that is it dawns on them that these people are more like him and much more “normal” than he’d thought.

Still there may be communities for whom bringing in a group of “Hassidics” might be a bridge too far but who might be more open to a contingent of what appear to be clean-cut professional types (little do they know…). Personal warmth a passion for Yiddishkeit and the ability to carry a tune would still be indispensable but then no one type of Jew has a monopoly on those attributes.

When long ago I spent a couple years doing Jewish outreach on Long Island where in so many areas religious and nonreligious Jews live physically apart from each other I would anguish about our inability to share our crown jewel Shabbos Kodesh with unaffiliated Jews. Here we possessed this immensely affecting spiritual experience yet it remained beyond their reach unless they were to leave the comfort of their own neighborhoods and homes which itself is fraught with tactical and halachic complexities.

I would dream about ways to bring a total Shabbos experience to them with seudos replete with good food good sounds and good conversation perhaps a beginner’s service or two all compliments of a varied group of Yidden — Jews with joie de vivre and joie de Torah — who would simply show up and set up shop for 25 hours in East Meadow and Massapequa and Syosset.

I never did bring that to fruition but I still believe in the idea. I’ve even got a name for the venture that better-read unaffiliated Jews might appreciate — A Moveable Feast. All that’s missing are solutions for the major logistical difficulties involved the people to staff it and the money to finance it.