Photos of the Week: Festival of Colors; Purim celebrations

By Kit Doyle · March 10, 2023
 (RNS) — Each week Religion News Service presents a gallery of photos of religious expression around the world. This week’s photo gallery includes Hindus celebrating Holi, the festival of colors, Jewish Purim commemorations and more. A man whips yellow powder out of his hair while celebraing Holi, the Hindu festival of colors, in Prayagraj, in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, India, Tuesday, March 7, 2023. After two years of subdued festivities due to COVID-19, the Holi celebrations brought revelers back on the streets, smearing each other’s faces with bright powdered color, distributing sweets and squirting water at fellow festival-goers. Holi, also marks the arrival of spring. (AP Photo/Rajesh Kumar Singh) People smeared with colors pose together for photos during celebrations marking Holi, the Hindu festival of colors, in Mumbai, India, Tuesday, March 7, 2023. The festival heralds the arrival of spring. (AP Photo/Rajanish Kakade) Hindu devotees carry offerings to the deity Shri Krishna during the Holi festival in Kolkata, India, Sunday, March 5, 2023. Millions of Indians celebrated on Wednesday by dancing to the beat of drums and smearing each other with green, yellow and red colors and exchanging sweets in homes, parks and streets. Free from mask and other COVID-19 restrictions after two years, they also drenched each other with colored water. (AP Photo/Bikas Das) A Kashmiri Shiite Muslim, foreground, offers prayers at the grave of his relative to mark Shab-e-Barat, on the outskirts of Srinagar, Indian controlled Kashmir, Tuesday, March 7, 2022. Muslims visit ancestral graveyards for the salvation of the souls of the departed and also believe that all sins will be forgiven by praying to Allah throughout the night of Shab-e-Barat. (AP Photo/ Dar Yasin) Members of the KFD group, which represents Catholic women in Germany, protest prior to the Fifth Synodal Meeting in Frankfurt, Germany, Thursday, March 9, 2023, demanding equal rights for women in the Catholic Church. (Arne Dedert/dpa via AP) Clergy process out of the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angel after the funeral Mass for Bishop David O'Connell on Friday, March 3, 2023, in Los Angeles. RNS photo by Alejandra Molina A boy dances during a celebration of the Jewish festival of Purim at a party in Berlin, Germany, Tuesday, March 7, 2023. The German capital's Chabad community organized the party to give refugees from Ukraine the opportunity to celebrate the holiday with members of the local Jewish community. Purim commemorates the Jews' salvation from genocide in ancient Persia, as recounted in the Bible's Book of Esther. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber) Ultra-orthodox Jewish men rest after getting drunk during celebrations of the Jewish holiday of Purim in Mea Shearim, an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood in Jerusalem, Wednesday, March 8, 2023. Purim celebrates the Jews' salvation from genocide in ancient Persia, as recounted in the Bible's Book of Esther. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg) Members of Women of the Wall read the Book of Esther during the Jewish holiday of Purim, which coincides this year with International Women's Day, in the women's section at the Western Wall, in the Old City of Jerusalem, Wednesday, March 8, 2023. The group has waged a decades-long fight for gender equality at one of Judaism's holiest sites. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo) Afghan girls carry wedding cakes in a mass wedding ceremony on International Women's Day, in Kabul, Afghanistan, Wednesday, March 8, 2023. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi) Archival Photos Members of Women Strike for Peace demonstrate at the White House on July 20, 1977, to protest then-President Jimmy Carter's support of the neutron bomb and cruise missiles. Carter advised the Soviet Union in a speech to Southern legislators in Charleston, S.C., that the U.S. was prepared to limit its strategic weapons programs, such as the development of the cruise missile, if Moscow would agree to controls on its heavy intercontinental missiles. RNS archive photo. Photo courtesy of the Presbyterian Historical Society. Rabbi Arthur Schneier, of New York's landmark Park East Synagogue, second from left, carries the Torah with Cantor Moshe Geffen, during a procession to mark the 90th anniversary of the congregation, on April 20, 1980. RNS photo by Odette Lupis. Photo courtesy of the Presbyterian Historical Society.
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