Photos of the Week: Hanukkah; St. Nicholas

By Kit Doyle · December 8, 2023
 (RNS) — Each week Religion News Service presents a gallery of photos of religious expression around the world. This week’s photo gallery includes the start of Hanukkah, St. Nicholas traditions and more. People gather around a menorah lit up for Hanukkah, placed at the former site of a police station that was overrun by Hamas militants on Oct. 7, in Sderot, southern Israel, Thursday Dec. 7, 2023. (AP Photo/Leo Correa) A menorah stands outside the entrance to Temple Israel, Thursday, Dec. 7, 2023, in Albany, N.Y. A 28-year-old suspect was in police custody for allegedly firing two rounds from a shotgun outside the Jewish temple on Friday, just hours before the start of Hanukkah. Officials said no one was injured and police said they did not know the man's motive. (AP Photo/Maysoon Khan) German chancellor Olaf Scholz, right, and Rabbi Yehuda Teichtal attend the ceremony to light the first candle of Hanukkah menorah at Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, Germany, Thursday, Dec. 7, 2023. (AP Photo/ Markus Schreiber) A woman in conservative dress walks past a menorah standing outside a Jewish synagogue ahead of the start of Hanukkah, in Miami Beach, Fla., Friday, Dec. 1, 2023. Daily life for many Jews has been upended by the surprise attack on Oct. 7 in Israel, when Hamas militants killed about 1,200, mostly civilians, and by the rise in antisemitism worldwide during the ensuing war, in which more than 15,800 Palestinians have died. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell) A Jewish woman holds a placard and a candle as Jewish rabbis and members of the community gather demanding a permanent cease-fire in Gaza, during the first night of the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah, Thursday, Dec. 7, 2023, in New York. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki) St. Clement's Episcopal Church in Philadelphia celebrates a traditional Anglo-Catholic Requiem Mass for the dead of the 2023 Israel-Hamas War. The ceremony at the catafalque (an empty frame covered with a black pall) includes holy water, incense, and chanted prayers in English and Latin for God's mercy. It takes place at the end of the Mass in the absence of the bodies of the deceased. (Reader submitted photo by Richard Mammana) Archbishop Angaelos, left, and Britain's King Charles III attend an Advent Service and Christmas Reception at The Coptic Orthodox Church Centre UK in Stevenage, England, Tuesday, Dec. 5, 2023. After the service, the King met young volunteers from the church's ministries and members of the Coptic Orthodox Church Congregation unveiled a plaque and planted a tree. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung, Pool) Revelers take part in a traditional St. Nicholas procession in the village of Lidecko, Czech Republic, Monday, Dec. 4, 2023. This pre-Christmas tradition has survived for centuries in a few villages in the eastern part of the country. The whole group parades through the village for the weekend, going from door to door. St. Nicholas presents the kids with sweets. The devils wear home-made masks of sheep skin and the white creatures representing death with scythes frighten them. (AP Photo/Petr David Josek) Revelers take part in a traditional St. Nicholas procession in the village of Lidecko, Czech Republic, Monday, Dec. 4, 2023. Nicholas was a fourth century Catholic bishop from the Mediterranean port city of Myra (in modern-day Turkey). “Much of the rest is legend. There’s not really a lot of hard historical evidence about St. Nicholas,” said the Rev. Nicholas Ayo, author of “Saint Nicholas in America: Christmas Holy Day and Holiday.” (AP Photo/Petr David Josek, File) Notre Dame Cathedral is seen with its spire surrounded by scaffolding Tuesday, Dec. 5, 2023 in Paris. (AP Photo/ Thibault Camus) French President Emmanuel Macron watches Notre Dame cathedral from the top of the spire of the monument Friday, Dec. 8, 2023 in Paris. Macron visited Notre Dame Cathedral on Friday, marking the one-year countdown to its reopening in 2024, following extensive restoration after the fire four years ago. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena, Pool) Pope Francis, right, is flanked by Rome's Mayor Roberto Gualtieri during the pope's annual Christmas visit to venerate a statue of the Virgin Mary topping a monumental column, left, near the Spanish Steps in Rome, Friday, Dec. 8, 2023. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia) Archival Photos Bundled against the fierce cold and snow, a group of Native American protesters trudge through the Sierras toward the Nevada border on Feb. 13, 1978, on the first leg of their "long walk" from Sacramento to Washington to dramatize opposition to "anti-Indian" legislation in Congress. (RNS archive photo. Photo courtesy of the Presbyterian Historical Society.) Hattiesburg Minister's Project volunteer clergymen meet in a local church in 1964 in Hattiesburg, Miss., during the Civil Rights movement. (RNS archive photo by George Bollis. Photo courtesy of the Presbyterian Historical Society.)
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