According the wikipedia the first toilets and sewers were invented in the third millennium BC in Mohenjo-Daro. The Indus Valley Civilization also offered its citizens water-cleaning toilets with drains covered with burnt clay bricks by which the flowing water removed the human waste.
Archaeologists recently discovered ancient toilets in Palestine.
The same principle as in Mohenjo-Daro, where the people spoke Akkadian and might have used the word 'skheid' or separate.
The word in Yiddish is kafin.
I have never spoken Hebrew, since this language was traditonally reserved for schul or the temple until the invention of the apartheid Israeli state.
Still a shitter is a shitter or a klozet in Yiddish.
Last week I was walking along Myrtle Avenue in Clinton Hill and spotted a young Hassidic man driving a flathead truck loaded with portable toilets. His window was open and I approached the truck."
"Shalom. I am the last of the Shabbas Goys."
"Shalom." Most Hassids ignore goyim, but shabbas goys were once a necessary evil for performing physical tasks on the Holy Days.
"I was wondering if those Port-a-Sans were kosher."
"Yes, by all means the water is clean and undyed, which is absolutely forbidden by the Halacha. Also it is only for use by men and we instructed everyone not to flush using their one's elbow or foot and all the toilet paper is one sheet, since it against the law to tear anything on the Shabbat."
"Thank you for that information. Sie gesund."
I waved good-bye and realized the more I know about the Hassidim, the less I know, but that is one of the mysteries of life.
How to shit in peace.
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