The Hebrew Bible has words for excrement. Tzo’ah appears in Deuteronomy — waste must be buried outside the camp, because God walks among you. The Talmud tractate Berakhot rules on where one may and may not recite the Shema in proximity to it. There are measurements. There are rulings. The rabbis brought the same precision to bodily functions that they brought to everything else, because the body exists within the law and the law must address it. This is not squeamishness, and it is not comedy. It is a civilization taking itself seriously.

I was sitting in my garden when I heard it. I couldn’t see the street, only the voices coming over the fence.........

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