Ross Douthat, Biblical Impurity, and Antipathy toward the Temple

Judaism for the Thinking Person

Is Leviticus's insistence that those with skin afflictions (as well as having buried the dead) not go to Temple an exclusionary punishment for being sick? Or is that our modern reading which presumes that religion is exclusionary and judgmental? In this presentation, I use Ross Douthat's essay "Can the Meritocracy Find God? The secularization of America probably won’t reverse unless the intelligentsia gets religion" as a way to talk about America's prejudices against religion, and my particular concern that even Jewish leaders like me are too silent in the face of the current hype that all the cool innovation (and funding) is happening outside of our legacy institutions [which actually is an unchallenged claim mainly by people who don't go to synagogue] and that our success as communities should be judged as to how easy we make it for unaffiliated Jews to get their needs met without having to attend the Temple as it exists in our day. Is that respectful of the Temple?