Why are you interested in Thanksgiving? To try to differentiate between liberal Jews versus Muslim hypersensitivity? Because we whine as if Chanukah is a major holiday and deserves parity with Christmas and at least Ramadan is a major festival? At least we don't complain about Thanksgiving, and maybe Muslims will?

Well, post-war Haredim don't automatically celebrate Thanksgiving either.

I'm interested in Thanksgiving because it's a secular holiday. It would be hard (though not impossible) for one to make the case that a turkey applique be removed from a public school window because the state shall not endorse any religion. If there develops a movement to abolish it, and depending on the circumstances of such a movement, then I might consider that a flawed but curious indicator of the  community's position in regard to creeping sharia and/or separation of church and state. An inexact mode of triangulation, if you will.

As for "liberal Jews," I don't get it. Who brought up liberal Jews? If you've decided that I am one, you'd be wrong.

And who is this critical "we" that you've found "whining" for dear life on the front lines of the Chanukah war? And what have I to do with them? Let alone the "post-war Haredim"?

And while we're at it, my discomfort with John McCain's comments haven't a thing to do with some burning desire for a Jewish president, but rather everything to do with my burning desire that this country live up to some of its finer ideals.

<i> My anecdotal data shows a robust disinclination on the part of Muslim cabdrivers to carve turkey and eat stuffing. (For what it’s worth, and I think it is worth something, the few who told me they did celebrate thanksgiving were from Africa.) </i>

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This doesn't exactly tell you anything about whether American Muslims are integrating into American society.  You need to pose this question to the  of American Muslims who were born here.  I would be surprised, based on my own anecdotal evidence, if the majority of them did not celebrate the holiday.

The idea that accommodating Muslim's religious observance is "creeping Sharia" is rather alarmist.  Do you consider permitting the construction of eruvs to be "creeping Halakha"?  The Europeans may not know how to deal with religious pluralism, but we've had a pretty good track record.  The key of course to accommodate religious practice without compromising on liberal principles.  For example, the Gospel Club gets to pray at recess if its student led, but we don't teach creationism in biology class.

Installing footbaths to limit the number of slip and falls in university bathrooms is innocuous.  On the other hand, refusing to teach the Holocaust out of fear of offending Muslim sentiment is a dangerous precedent.

LIED TO BY CNN?

Jewish community professional Jay Tcath describes in the Jerusalem Post what happened when CNN asked him to assist in and appear on Christiane Amanpour's "God's Warriors":

She [CNN's producer] learned of our JCRC through her mother, a non-Jewish resident of a Chicago suburb who admired our leading role in advocating an end to the Darfur genocide. It was precisely this type of activity, the noble pursuit of justice by grassroots people motivated by religious impulses and acting through religious institutions that the young producer claimed the network and its star correspondent, Christiane Amanpour, wanted to explore. After all, she told us, it is such a decent, important activity and so much more real, common and under-reported than the conventional stereotypes promoted by the mass media. She insisted that CNN's aim was not to focus - as others do ad nauseam - on the radical fringes among the Jews, Christians and Muslims....

Tcath said the CNN crew arrived in February to film his organization painting Israeli bomb shelters and holding talks with representatives on Capitol Hill on subjects ranging from Israel and Darfur to hate crime legislation and social services.

So why then did virtually all of the footage end up on the cutting room floor? I have my suspicions:

1. The producer was sincere and she and perhaps others at CNN wanted to create a program along the lines she originally described, but lost an internal battle over editorial content;

2. She and perhaps others at CNN sought to lull us into doing or saying something on tape that would have fit their "Jewish Warrior" story line, or;

3. We were simply lied to.