Three Faith Holidays Celebrated in Nashville

September 25, 2006

Source: The Jackson Sun

http://www.jacksonsun.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060925/NEWS01/609250307/1002

On September 25, 2006 The Jackson Sun reported, "In the span of several hours Saturday, three of the world's major religions began observances of some of their holiest holidays. In the predawn hours in Green Hills, the Fakhruddin family awoke to eat breakfast before sunrise on the first day of Ramadan, a monthlong holiday in which Muslims contemplate God, family and community ties. The Fakhruddins and other Midstate Muslims observe the holiday by fasting from sun-up to sun-down. Later that morning in Bellevue, Krishan Paul, 78, joined dozens of area Hindus seated on the carpeted floor of the ornate Sri Ganesha Temple singing an hourlong prayer to God on the first day of Navratri, a nine-day Hindu celebration marking the triumph of good over evil, the goddess Durga and the power of the feminine side of nature. And a short time later and a few miles east on Old Hickory Boulevard, Jews gathered at Congregation Micah in Brentwood to observe the first full day of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. Fourteen-year-old Eli Holmes joined a small procession that walked from the synagogue to the small creek behind it, where he threw in pieces of bread to symbolically cast out the sins of the past year. Three holidays' falling on the same day is a rare convergence of three religious calendars, each based in part on the cycles of the moon. The three holidays each fell in the same month last year, and that won't happen again until September 2039."