taking measures to protect the 84 year old pope especially after more than a dozen infections were reported among the vatican swiss guards a mass unlike any other in recent history marked by a pandemic with millions of faithful hoping next year will be different. for civilian al-jazeera. this is al to syria these are the headlines that are is a meeting to discuss the new trade deal with the u.k. they're expected to endorse it so head of ratification it's the science of finally agreed a 0 tariff deal after months of tense negotiations to where we've left the e.u. this country will remain culturally emotionally historically strategically geologically attached to europe at

the end of a successful negotiations journey i normally feel joy but today i only feel quite satisfaction and frankly speaking relief. i know this is a difficult day for some and to our friends in the united kingdom i want to say parting is such sweet sorrow. south korea has recorded its biggest daily increase in corona virus infections since the start of the pandemic it reported more than 1200 new cases as it rolled out its toughest ever restrictions. the u.s. has announced new restrictions for travelers from the u.k. visitors from britain must test negative for corona virus these 3 days before traveling to the united states the new rules will apply from monday the decision follows the emergence of

a highly infectious nice tree in the united kingdom millions of americans will have to wait until after christmas for financial help due to a deadlock over a $900000000000.00 over $1000.00 stimulus package president trump surprised both democrats and republicans by sending the bill back to congress for amendments this week he said $600.00 direct payments to people were too small and called for $2000.00 checks democrats support the increase but republicans are blocking it mexico has started its coronavirus vaccination campaign and intensive care nurse received the 1st dose argentina is to rule out a russian made vaccine for monday and thousands of pfizer biotech doses have arrived at hospitals in chile. syrian state t.v. says the country's air defenses of shut down several missiles by israel the sun a news agency says the strikes were carried out in the last year of area state stay with us and al-jazeera the stream is next. one of africa's most troubled nations

heads to the polls for presidential and parliamentary elections in a country plagued by violence and political instability could this bring the resolution that is desperately needed central african republic elections on al-jazeera. i've been yeah ok welcome to one of my favorite streams shows of the here say fleet as round table a rabbi a reverend and 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 faith impacts your he 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 cart. this year i watched feet help people survive their one of the greatest gifts god has given our community i've watched our faith community have show up for one hour are dropping off me on doorsteps by making masks for other folks by teaching them how to use zoom or facebook or whatever for the 1st time by praying or by hoping that by loving it 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. by fleet is it 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 after

jackie lists 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. not to have a rabbi was to welcome back to the stream good to see you know his silly we know what you do by in job title but develop that a little bit more lovely to have you on the stream and i'm delighted to be here rabbi daniel written bird and scholar in residence at the national council of jewish women which is also a very old organization we were founded $893.00 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 and i'm latif nice to see free time i don't say. it was so nice to see you as well my name is because 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 a remarkable 2 or 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 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 have similar visions in this instance. so guests and

audience i 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 have a rather 2021 s dramatic. yet there are 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. 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 a revealing a certain thing that many segments of our society have sought to raise and hide and revealing over all of things that i think no one can really be in denial of anymore in terms of how our minds 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 but 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 stana a friend stella is a member of the he american foundation he talks about going on not designing a thing on the night serious 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 pen deming 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 to 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 virtual 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 of 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 it is a lot of places around the world where people then set up ways to check in on our neighbors who are 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 mid-week worship on a wednesday and to worship on sunday when called out and soul and lot of young people gravitated toward that but when we outgrew our space and were in a land while the east village location the man 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 you 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 a lot 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 flower hooks now 5 people 7

people at a tea party to to create our connections and more easily in the neck the large 24 hour 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 never it's gonna be tweets you're out there but telling really important moments like ram a dam and eat and having that distance not being out to be close together how did you adapt. well 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 steal that if. i'm looking forward looking forward to the tick tock dr there is with rita for the entire eman we just heard in her sunday she's can't believe that 7 years of the making in a man's shoes 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 were 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 holidays 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 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 dealing gays and living their faith so to speak. that 70 aside to it of course when 202020 wasn't just about health crisis there were other things that were happening that i knew that you were

getting involved in there was protests and it was a kola takes i want to bring in the voices of rabbi had a spirit and it was a pastor lucy is still with and they were in d.c. washington d.c. they want to get that 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 all for a series talking conversation on race to do in the pandemic and or that we learned from me to this pandemic touches everybody no matter what our. economics the us. 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 if you talk to us this is from. 2021 to little people up to government suppression and oppression you're still it's. 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 them you should religiously to school out well it is when they do not hold the values of religion.

as a proper interest. 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 i don't know what the news or if they'd been to me specifically so a little bit like you know me as being the mission 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 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. the big question. 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. 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 the health care 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 women who enter into a conversation if i made up their has not come right back to you i did promise this is all to fire at that i see he's just thinking about what 2020 clung to teach them some ass site from at the mental point if you he she it's. been damaged dramatic it completely disrupts one's life bringing. fear a 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 the anchors 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 cottage

. so i had 3 minutes left i have a 1000000 things each of you if i say please. what would you want to leave us with done to us. for our people of faith and for people whose faith is. let us go to 2020 demanding that classifies matter. demanding that we pay attention to the foundation's democracy and that will take us to the radical and to some it has a eradicate 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 on which this nation was built and that's racism and make that go away with. rabbi. a man. that's my favorite number 10.

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 their 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 the 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

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 the tif is coming to instagram live with me at 2030 g.m.t. your piano joining the 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 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 for a fleet as round table as one of my favorite strange shows of the entire. doc to do it's. a mom with teeth you chivas thank you so much see those 2 in the bad leg. january on al-jazeera it's 10 years since the arab spring sought to bring change to the middle east al-jazeera looks into how successful look at pollutions what a new documentary series examines the history and giancana takes of drug trafficking and the way states and drug lords abused it as an instrument of power a spark summations a big old out around the world hope of returning to name it comes back again with

media trends constantly changing listening post continues to analyze how the news is covered up to one of the most intense election campaigns the u.s. is set to inaugurate it's 56 percent in. january on al-jazeera. water scarcity has become a major global issue the demand is going straight up and the supply is going straight down turning an essential natural resource into a commodity traded for profit just because life doesn't mean it cannot be product what about the guy that can afford it guys teles water. al-jazeera examines the social financial and environmental impact of water privatisation loads of water on al-jazeera and new perspective can change the world. for one chin is ian what began as a hobby has grown into a passion own way of life. teaching the next generation to strive for

a higher level. and in so installing in his country. a sense of freedom and strength. new heights my chin is here on al-jazeera. the. glad tidings great joy because this is a deal. the u.k. prime minister hails the last ditch breck's at agreements on trade with the e.u. as britons respond with mixed feelings. alabama and this is al jazeera life and doha also coming up. a record

daily occurrence of coronavirus cases in south korea as it struggles to control 2nd wave of the outbreak plus.