the fossil fuel powered boats are on the way out a marine could be getting some good news his canal is set to be the next phase for the electric both that will allow him to fish in peace and relative quiet it's got other al-jazeera banker. all the main story this hour after 8 months of talks just 7 days before the deadline european union in the u.k. have clinched a trade deal the agreement for as 0 tariff 0 quota relationship covers everything from energy to fishing the e.u. want protection for a level playing field on regulation while the u.k. avoided a future role for the european court of justice britain's prime minister boris johnson says he's delivered the promises of the 2016 vote to leave his country no longer bound by the rules i think this deal means a new stability and a new uncertainty in what has sometimes been

a fractious and difficult relationship we will be your friend you our ally your supporter and indeed never let it be forgotten you will number one market because although we've left the e.u. this country will remain culturally emotionally historically strategically geologically attached to europe. are the headlines this hour 2 new strains of the coronavirus have emerged in africa with separate mutations recorded in nigeria and south africa a new variant in south africa is believed to be more infectious contributing to experts of called an alarming rate of spread countries total number of cases is rapidly approaching $1000000.00. thousands of truck drivers were main stranded at the english port of dover for christmas day waiting on negative coronavirus test

results so far only 3 drivers have received positive results with more than 2300 getting your clear had a fair chance to cross the channel fewer than $100.00 vehicles had left the port on wednesday evening most likely to spend a total of 5 nights overall in their vehicles with limited access to food water and access to sanitation and state affiliated media in ethiopia is reporting that soldiers have killed a group of men accused of an attack on a village the incidents in the western region of benny's shango goma so more than 100 villages killed media reports suggest 42 armed men were killed after prime minister that sent in troops. so the stream is coming up next on al-jazeera taking a look back at the year allah see you after that for more news in 25 minutes time i feel.

i've been you know ok welcome to one of my favorites tunisians of the here say fleet as roundtable a rabbi a reverend and imaam walked into the stream let's see what happens they will be looking back at 2020 we'd love to hear about your 2020 as well how do you think life impacts your year if you and you can jump into the comments section and you too can be part of this discussion we get started on earth a fetus roundtable with the reverend cotton. this year i've watched feet help people survive their one of the greatest gifts god has given our

community i watched our community it show up for one hour by dropping ami on our doorsteps by making masks for other folks by teaching them how to use zoom or facebook or whatever for the 1st time by praying and by hoping and by by protesting for one another's lives and as we've shown up in community we've realized that while this year community may have felt like our risk is the only thing that gets us through the only thing that keeps us alive and it's the hope i have for all of the years to come. so good to see you i am going to say hello to you you are going to greet our guest dr lewis tell our international audience who you are. happy holidays everybody dr jackie lewis and i and the senior minister at little collegiate church we are the oldest continuous protestant church in north america and the oldest corporation in the united states we predict

a country where multi everything congregation of the lower east side i'm glad to be here. to have a rabbi was to welcome back to the stream good to see you obviously we know what you do by your job title but develop that a little bit more lovely to have you on the street and i'm delighted to be here rabbi don't you reckon bird and scholar in residence at the national council of jewish women which is also a very old organization we were founded 1893 and have since then been mobilizing the jewish community to fight for justice and safety for women children and families we have now a $180000.00 grassroots advocates on the ground who push for just law does and fair courts in nice to see or don't see you are. it was so nice to see you as well my name is scholar of the tea

service the university chaplain of new york university and also the executive director of the islamic center in n.y.u. where we have been going around for that long in comparison to my colleague institutions and that's so remarkable to hear a long year old been around for. our institutional memory is rooted in a student group that was founded in 1978 by a handful of muslim students what we now have about 3000 muslim students at n.y.u. and many people who live and work in the surrounding area they come to our center and students community we cater to about 10000 people now from a diverse set of backgrounds in new york city and are blessed to work with many different institutions that have similar visions in this instance. so i guess an audience always like to unpack a little bit of what happens behind the scenes on the stream so this title for this unofficially was 2020 was and then we had of the natura naughty what i can not say

. that was that it was the subtitle put a show now that you were going to find the black 2020 was dealt to the race what would you feel in the black now feel to go for it a fully ness. i feel that i would rather than 2020 was dramatic. and yet there were a lot of different kinds of traumas that were generated and other longstanding traumas in our country that were surfaced in it and new really not in new ways but yet again i would say. in 2020 was. i'd say 2020 was revealing and i think it was revealing of things that some

segments of our society and community have known for some time revealing a certain thing that many segments of our society have sought to erase and hide and revealing over all of things that i think no one can really be in denial of anymore in terms of how elements of race and class still determine who has and who has not how they are people who are motivated by elements of the common good and who meet everything with selflessness and interconnectedness on the front lines and people who are very self interested in egocentric always seek to cater to the majority and privileged and i think it's very revealing also an individual level of who it is that we are in terms of how we responded to all of. it was very educational samee and the stream is is a digital showing we know how to be online we know how to be in the virtual out that was how quickly the rest of the world managed to navigate if we can't meet as

a community how else do we get together i want to bring in the voice of frank stan a friend stella is a member of the he american foundation he talks about going on 9 the final thing on the line here is one example i can think of a faith community supports its members is so from a zation fellowship known in india as you go to a society an organization deeply rooted in the hindu yoga tradition and ever since the start of the penned they've been offering online guided meditations yoga exercises and scriptural studies and offering tools to get us through this very stressful time for how did you deal with the virtual well it's. here you know i mean with mixed success i think i had of the jewish community as

a whole pivoted pretty quickly to being on zoom even though there are all sorts of reasons in jewish law that would not be extremely not the ideal saving lives trumps everything and so for our ritual holidays and sabbaths we went for jewel right away with you know some bumps but we did it and then she did other you know we moved all of our learning on line you know we moved all our gatherings on line and we need our advocacy tactics to be a digital city e-mails to the phone calls to between storms and not to be showing off in person and people's spaces. and it's been remarkable to see how much community can be built in these spaces and we have to continue to remember that there is absolutely a difference between being as in the screen the way we are now and being in

physical proximity and to be continually tuned to those who are more isolated because of the pandemic the more risk and as he did of you he said in the program i put a lot of places around the world where people then set up ways to check in on our neighbors who were most vulnerable and most at risk and a lot of people got left you know in the wider community. and. yeah you know it's a fine line there's there are so many things that we can't do in person but i think the jewish community as a whole and it's really traveled how quickly and how well he managed to step up to do what could be done in the space to to learn. but yeah about about 7 years ago we outgrew our sanctuary it's 328 people and we had about a 1000 members and we try to work around there but african midweek were shot on

a wednesday and to worship on sunday one called art and soul and lots of young people gravitated to that but when we outgrew our space and were in a land right east village location can tell you what that's like we decided to quote push our sanctuary a while back by beginning to build a digital church we heard a digital minister we got some cameras and we began to do digital worship and i think people loved it they could wake up on saturday morning we play something from last and it were on their phones or on the computers watch church but really it was watching the backs of heads so we stop worshipping our sanctuary march 15th and the very next week we were doing digital worship differently meeting at my computer talking directly to news in the archive to pieces of art or creating new ones and i have to tell you i am so amazed at what happened for us $250.00 people have joined our church since march they've joined comparison iowa and from

chicago you know from chelsea they found us a progressive multi-racial multicultural actually interfaith church online and it was it was easy for them to find us and it was easy for them to join us so our movement has grown we've done lots of things for kids lots of educational programs and our big revolutionary love conference that we have and will actually have. more attendees this year than ever before so will we i think what we found is a justice. protestant modern need to all the net change that people needed from us and we were able to step into that i do agree with the rabbi the challenges though of just intimacy so we're doing smaller groups now 5 people 7 people at a tea party to to create our connections and more easily lamech the large ones for our movement has actually grown in assignments. you have quite

a young group of people that you have to take care of you was a deal with students you are on social media i love it's gonna be tweets you're out there but telling really important moments like ramadan the ied and having that distance not being out to be close together how did you adapt. for starters you know as i say dr lewis i think the idea of a disease or minister is an amazing idea and i might still that if. i'm looking forward i'm looking forward to the tick tock dr lewis with rita for the entire iran we just heard interest and a she's can't believe that 7 years in the making and. she's great her. so wonderful. you know on our end i think we adapted in a lot of the similar ways as most. communities. we

were doing a quick adaptation of virtual program that had us now at times doing 8 to 12 programs a day leveraging the talents and skills of our community so that in addition to spiritual and religious services that we're now online as best as we could with the restrictions on certain things that we weren't just able to do online virtually we were doing things like yoga at lunch time in story time for children and healing to the arts programs and how to create websites and rate resumes but a model that we seek to implement in person that has multiple entry points that caters to the diversity of our community we now see to transition to a virtual setting and that included holiday services and other things one of the things that we sought to do right off the bat was also given opportunities for members of our community to still live their faith we really like to tell them that

physical separation doesn't necessitate spiritual disconnectedness and we can still aspire to be a reason that people have hope in the world instead of a reason that people might find dread and so a week into social distancing right in march and we launched the 1st of a series of crowdfunding campaigns in about 2 weeks raised over $600000.00 and was the 1st of probably 5 or 6 campaigns that we then ran over the next few months to assist people who were impacted by coded people who lost loved ones people who are ill people who lost their jobs they had no health care somehow or the only country in the world in the midst of a pandemic that takes health care away from 5 and a half 1000000 people and over 3 months of time we had 40000 unique donations come in and got us close to about 2 point $6000000.00 there were 3 of you but it wasn't any one person running a 1000000. knowledge check but i think a leveraging

a sense of ethic and value and cohesiveness and community to say that where you can even give a dollar you can give 2 dollars 5 dollars and we all come together and really help people and that then in turn made the holiday services and the other services that weren't what they normally were a different source of spiritual growth and a different source of transformation because they were imbedded within these other projects in campaigns that we were running on to give people an opportunity to really actualize in dealin gays of living their faith so to speak. that 70 minutes led to it of course when 22020 wasn't just about a health crisis there were other things that were happening that i know that you were getting involved in there was protests and i want to bring in the voices of rabbi had a spirit and also a pastor lucy is still with and they were in d.c.

washington d.c. they want to get there have a listen to what they want to add to masha and we've been doing things together with you know our congregations 3 years now but it's picked up during the pandemic and it's not especially powerful one of the things we do here is that we do it over 4 series talking conversation on race to do in the pandemic and do all of that we learn from each of the this pandemic touches everybody no matter what our. economics that this. background is affects all of us and we also talked about the impact of greece. to the. so faithfully does a number of questions for you from you tube i'm going to further questions at you i need a very fast instance response i know you can handle this and this one is for you dr

lewis this is from the low 2021 to little people up to government suppression and oppression you're still it's. the african-american person living in america these were not new insights for me but i do think the murder of george floyd we are a tailor and we all have been back to that woke up white people to racism and also woke up the nation to how much of our national ethic is built on white supremacy i think that's been a startling insight for some of my allies but it's really it's really truth. rabbi this one's for you against the religiously to school out well to lead us when we do not hold the values of religion. as a privileged. treat as appropriate as relevant i think as always

we need to remember that focusing on particular policy is as unjust rather than entire people or entire nations as evil is the way to do that but i think there are times in places when our moral leadership needs to extend an reverberate as far as injustices happening. why did you laugh. because i felt if that was actually directed to me specifically at the news or if they'd been to me specifically so a little bit like you know me as being the occupation oh ok. often often what i mean interest rates space the occupation israel's occupation of palestine land the palestinian land is an elephant in the room and people want to know how i am showing up as as a jew and as someone committed to human rights. that gross violation of human

rights civil rights and international law and it's a complex topic and requires you to do it right it requires a lot of teasing out but the bottom line is you can and should criticize policies that are unjust and be clear about conflating that with demonizing entire people. are going to ask each of you respond to this briefly this is from critics mariya how do we find unity in 2021 why such a big question. i think restorers. unity i think has to be real and i think one of things 2020 allowed us to do is to understand that we are all connected to each other and interdependence is something we don't have to aspire towards but individually we can determine what we base our connections off of and for us to be unified in those connections i

think we have to 1st understand what makes us separate and what divides us and to me good religion is one that brings people to taking on societal ills and illnesses and there's no greater illness than racism right now and if your practice of religion isn't bringing you to take that on and say what's the point of your religion and for us to come together in a way that's not performative or just convenient or tokenize ing people who are willing to come together have to recognize that there's a lot of people who don't want to be connected to people who have certain skin colors or come from certain levels of wealth or poverty and they want to be very much disconnected and where we can understand that has to be a stepping stone to becoming now more unified not at the level of shared xterm ills but shared internals shared values shared hearts we can't romanticize or be

idealistic in terms of how we approach this as a concept and i think to. echo what was said before fundamentally we have to be honest with the deeply entrenched anti blackness that is really entrenched in so much of what this country is built upon and what we've seen in 2020 is that every system from the prison system to the immigration system to the healthcare system to the justice system does not honor a black life and right now for us to come together on anything that. denies that. you races that there pretends like it's not there that's not a real unity and we're governmental apparatus is quite often engaged in equities policies for people of good conscience to come together in a way that i think is a real form of hope because it's not denying now what many people go through that there's some of us just will never have to see in our lives yeah i want to bring

woman who entered into a conversation if i made up there is not a right that you i do promise this is all to fire at the i.c. he's just thinking about what 2020 clanchy to teach them some ass sight from at the mental point if you he she it's. dramatic it completely disrupts one's life bringing. fear sense of helplessness complete loss of control people who have religion and spirituality in their their lives it's inevitable that these times they turn to god and this free that angers them give them the strands do have the dom's this connection to a higher power give them brings them to fly solution and fear or give them coverage . so i had 3 minutes left i have a minute each of you if i say preach what would you want to leave us with done to

us. for our people of faith and for people who think. let us go to 2020 demanding that classifies matter. demanding that we pay attention to the foundation of us democracy and that will take us to the radicals and to semitism and eradicate and to islamic center that it will help us to think compassionately women and children and people on the margins it will help us with our border politics we have to start with a fundamental fault line upon which this nation was built and that's racism and make that go away with. rabbi. a man. that's my favorite number 10 on. our job are on this planets it is how we serve god if that is

a phrase that makes sense to you it is how we are job here is to take care of one another that's all we've got and that needs to permeate everything we are and everything we do it involves looking at all of the systems of racism and inequality that have been set. in this country all of the ways in which those in power are continuing to. increase divisions between rich and poor right and that to in further entrench systems avoid supremacy it involves overhauling the way we think about health care and mass incarceration and almost every other. it situation in our culture so that now every single human being can be free can flourish can be safe can be

healthy and has the opportunity to pursue happiness. let me share this with you on my laptop in i'm the chief is coming to instagram live with me at 2030 g.m.t. your piano joining that conversation we've been talking more about this year for the in mom and what it was like but if i ask you in a sentence just to tease that conversation in the teeth what would you say is your closing sought literally a sentence going to. say. it's time for each one of us to recognize our own ability to be a source of light for people and for all those of you who are watching right now is the time to go out and really share your light with others and you have it in you just have to choose. to love it and then go out and spread it. and this is the reason why the faith leaders round table is one of my favorite

strange shows if the. dull to do it's. a man with teeth ichi this thank you so much see those 2 and. business leaders just want to find a brush paul. business

leaders just want to find a brush paul. the silence has been this. belief. is one of scandinavia some are just iron ore deposits. and it's driving

a wedge between those seeking wealth. those defending their way of life. gala a witness documentary on a jersey and. hello i'm maryam namazie and london with a quick look at the main story now after 8 months of tense talks and just 7 days before the deadline the european union and the u.k. have clinched a trade deal the agreement for a 0 tariff 0 quota relationship covers everything from energy to fishing the e.u. want protection for a level playing field on regulation while the u.k. avoided a future role for the european court of justice so at the end of a successful negotiations journey i normally feel chilly but today i only feel quite satisfied.