Can one treat a patient against his will? What, according to the Talmud, are the causes of bowel disease? And why does Shmuel cruelly humiliate the man who would become his lifelong hevruta, the great Amora Rav? A reading of Shabbat 108a, through the Talmud and Midrash, the Geonim and Rishonim, Mikhail Bakhtin and Daniel Boyarin, Joseph B. Soloveitchik and Avraham Steinberg.
