Passover Seders traditionally end with the phrase, “Next Year in Jerusalem.” On Killing the Buddha, Rachel Leven explains why she won’t be saying it this year.

Jerusalem, this Passover, is not a city of peace, but a violent mess. Jews today need to find a way to understand this, to separate a holy ideal from an unholy reality. I don’t care whether you hope for a two-state or a one state solution, or whether you think Israel should extend from Jordan to the sea. All I ask is that we remove the ritual film from our eyes, look at the facts, and see the real city for what it is.

Source: Killing the Buddha 

Priggish Bible-thumpers may use the Good Book to justify sexual conservatism, but the actual text of the Bible is anything but prudish. The book is filled with innuendo, bawdy behavior, and enough obscenities to make modern, HBO-inured adults blush. Religious scolds may never stop quoting scripture to call for sexual civility, but Tibor Krausz writes in a book review for Killing the Buddha, “sexual civility requires ignoring scripture.”

The bone taken from Adam to create Eve, for example, may not have been a rib bone, as is often taught in bible class. The word “bone” may have been a far more modern euphemism for male genitalia. And the word “testify” may have been pretty dirty, too:

In court we swear to tell the truth with a hand placed on the Bible. But in the book itself, Jacob, nearing death in Egypt, asks Joseph to swear an oath not to bury him there by “put[ting] your hand under my thigh” (Gen. 47:29). Earlier in Genesis, Jacob wrestles with God, who touches “the hollow of his [Jacob’s] thigh” (32:25). “Thigh” happens to be a biblical euphemism for male genitalia; it’s from Jacob’s “thigh” or “loins” that his numerous offspring sprang. The practice of swearing an oath while touching one’s or someone else’s testicles was common in the ancient Near East (Abraham also orders a servant to do just that in Genesis 24:2). Its linguistic memory survives in our word “testify”— testis being the Latin both for “witness” and the male generative gland.

(Thanks, Marginal Revolution.)

Source:  Killing the Buddha  

“My church doesn’t want me,” Eileen Markey writes for Killing the Buddha. “It is a profoundly lonely feeling.” Catholicism can offer absolute answers and a moralistic certainty that Markey cannot accept. At the same time, she can’t reject her sincere belief and faith in the church she grew up in. “How does one explain belief in something so absurd?” she wonders. “I can’t. I just believe.”

Source: Killing the Buddha 

Spirituality is all about connection. Spiritualism, Gordon Haber writes for Killing the Buddha, “encourages self-involved people to become more self-involved.” In an amusing shot at astrology adherents, Haber mercilessly mocks the recently released book Cosmic Connection: Messages for a Better World, written by psychic medium Carole Lynne. “As much as I’d like to be tolerant of other’s beliefs,” Haber writes, “I’d rather have my eyes put out than suffer through another page of such unbridled narcissism.”

The problem isn’t in the spiritual beliefs, it’s in the way people use the spirituality as an excuse to disconnect from the real world. Haber writes: “I’ve never heard of anyone visiting a psychic in order to learn how to be more generous with other people.”

Source: Killing the Buddha

There comes a day when parents can no longer avoid talking to their children about sex. That day can be made more awkward if the talk is illustrated by comical drawings of fish with oversized genitalia. In an exploration into the Christian condemnation of masturbation, Scott Cheshire writes for Killing the Buddha about his father’s use of a Christian publication and hand-drawn fish cartoons to teach about procreation. “To fully appreciate the gross irony,” Cheshire writes, “please understand that I think of my father’s drawing whenever I find myself behind a car bumper bearing the Christian symbol of Ichthys—the Jesus Fish.”

Image by Jaako, licensed by Creative Commons.

After seven years of existence, the irreverent spirituality website Killing the Buddha has ceased to be. Founded by Harper’s Magazine contributing editor Jeff Sharlet, Peter Manseau, and Jeremy Brothers, the website won an Utne Independent Press Award in 2002 for Online Cultural Coverage. Described as a “religion magazine for people made anxious by churches,” Killing the Buddha published funny and highly personal essays including, “A Slut for Faith” “Gods and Guitars” and “Pushing Monks” (written about by Nick Rose for Utne.com in 2006 ). The website’s independent voices and perspectives, not attached to any religion or faith, undoubtedly will be missed.

—Bennett Gordon