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Today's Wall Street Journal reports that all across America, holiday shoppers at malls are being "accosted" by pushy, money-hungry Israelis selling everything from hand cream to toy helicopters. One of the twenty-something salespeople describes what he is doing, not to selling but to "hunting". Is this a story which trumpets old anti-Semitic stereotypes, or is it just accurately reporting a cultural phenomenon? Might it be both, simultaneously?

Even the non-Israeli vendors who work alongside them at the malls, report mixed feelings about the phenomenal success (as much as $500.00 a day) of these post-army Israelis financing everything from trips to South America to their next folk albums with their push cart earnings.

Some non-Israeli cart operators have mixed feelings about the competition. Israelis "are really hassling people a lot," and people are losing respect for the carts, says Ayhan Yuce, a Turkish immigrant who sells jewelry, sunglasses and toys at carts in about 60 U.S. malls. Still, he's considering studying Hebrew.

"I really would like to hire some of those Israelis," he says. "They are really good salesmen. You have to admire them."

So is this just another story of people finding financial opportunity in America? Is it a source of pride to those who admire the Israeli can-do spirit? Is it an ugly tale of money-grubbing Jews preying on their Christian neighbors doing some innocent Christmas shopping?

I am not sure, but I bet you all have an idea. Let me know what you think.

President-elect Obama hasn't been to church in weeks, saying he doesn't want to disrupt the service for others. I find that rationale a little tough to swallow, but wish that he would share his real thoughts on the matter. As with so many other large cultural issues, he could move forward an important conversation about faith in our nation.

Of course, if President-elect Obama chooses not to attend church, that's his business. And he owes no explanation for making that choice. The idea that our president must attend church, flies in the face the very religious liberty upon which our nation is founded. But telling us that he has made that choice because he "doesn't want to disrupt the service for others" stretches even this supporter's ability to trust his answer on this issue.

For starters, my guess is that while his attendance at a church of his choosing would cause some logistical challenges, on balance, most worshippers would be delighted share a pew with the president-elect. Far from disrupting the service, I imagine it would affirm the faith of those who worship alongside him.

And even if one accepts his rationale for not attending church with others, it does not explain why the president-elect has not made alternative arrangements for formal prayer in a more private setting. He would be far from the first public figure to do so. So that cannot be it either.

It would be quite interesting to here from him why he chooses not to engage in any kind of public worship at this time, especially after so many years of regular church attendance. But whatever the real answer is, the inability to share it has as much to do with the American public as it does with President-elect Obama.

Are we really ready to hear our president say that public prayer is simply not that important to him?

Does God care what size we are? According to Christine B. Whelan in this morning's USA Today, The answer is certainly not! But how can she be so certain? If there really is a God (I believe that there is) and if He/She/It geuninely cares about us (something which I also want to believe), then there is nothing outlandish about that God caring what size we are.

Having struggled with weight pretty much my entire life (have you seen my picture?), I appreciate how painful and guilt inducing this issue can be. But experiencing a measure of pain and guilt over not doing all that we can to care for the gift of the bodies we have been given is not so bad. Please note that I wrote pain or guilt, not shame.

The God in whom I believe does not love us any less or see us as any less beautiful because we may not be as healthy as we can be. And we should give ourselves the same due. We, as God, can love the lumpy bumpy bodies that we have, even if it pains us that they are not as healthy as we would like. But we should also accept a degree of responsibility for the condition of our physical bodies just as we do for our spiritual selves.

The Hebrew Bible commands it readers to "choose life" and to "guard our lives".

Muslim Anti-Semitism is a very real, but whether or not hatred of Jews is either typical among contemporary Muslims, at least in America, or reflective of traditional Islam, is another story. That appraisal probably disturbs people on each side, with half already screaming that I am an Islamaphobe and the other half that I am a shill for the Muslim community.

Whether my assessment is correct or not, one thing is for certain: no problem, whether between individuals, communities or nations, gets better until each side can imagine that they are more guilty than they like to admit and that the other side is not as bad as they like to imagine. And all the attempts to avoid that, however well-intentioned, simply fuel the fires of hatred and suspicion on both sides.

Beliefnet's Islam editor Dilshad Ali shared with me a piece by Muslim Next Door author, Sumbul Ali-Karamali which falls prey to some of that avoidance. Ms. Ali-Karamali largely ignores the real challenges of Muslim anti-Semitism, opting instead to explain how hatred of Jews has no place in classical Islam and has been rarely manifested among Muslims. And as beautiful as her conclusions are, it makes me wonder what she could be thinking.

Even if one makes a solid case for the relative merits of Islam over Christianity vis a vis the past treatment of Jews, which is entirely appropriate, we can not ignore the second-class status imposed upon Jews even under the crescent. Of course, as Ali-Karamali proudly points out, Jews were honored as people of the book, but they were hardly equal citizens. Jews were also relegated to the status of protected minorities forced to pay a Jewish head tax.

Thanksgiving is only a week away. And while we all appreciate the time off, it's worth remembering how this holiday came to be and thinking together about whether of not it's really a good idea.

I think that Presidents Washington and Lincoln were correct about the importance of proclamations of a national day of thanksgiving, to which they both attached their signatures, but wrong to include the phrase "to God". Though to be fair to each of them, given the age in which they lived, it made perfect sense to do so. President Jackson may have been correct to refuse a national day of prayer, but both he and we should be heavy-hearted about that reality.

No society has cultivated long-term success without nurturing in its members the ability to reflect and meditate on the most important issues of the day. And no society has maintained its strength without cultivating its citizens' capacity for gratitude. But God need not be a part of that for all Americans, even if it is for most of us. In fact, legislating that God should be, strikes me as an idea that is as wrong as creating national days of thanksgiving and prayer are right.

Perhaps we are not ready for a national day of prayer because we do not yet know how to pull that off without trampling on the rights of those who pray differently or do not consider their reflections to be prayer at all. But the fact that we are not able to accomplish something does not make it a bad idea. It means that we have more work to do as a nation - work on the definitions of prayer and thanksgiving, and work on our ability to respect each other's forms of ethical or spiritual reflection.

This issue cuts to the heart of a needless dichotomy which weakens our public culture and degrades public conversation about the soul our nation.