Heart and Soul

The magnificent Maghen David synagogue in Kolkata, India, was once a place of worship for a thriving community of Baghdadi Jews in the city. Now, not more than 30 Jews remain, most of them elderly. There was no resident rabbi from the mid-'60s onwards and, for years, no regular services have been held in the synagogue. But the Maghen David synagogue still occupies a special place in the hearts and souls of those who have known and used it.

Jael Silliman and her mother Flower have returned to Kolkata, the city of their birth, after living in the USA and Israel. Before the community completely disappears, Jael is trying to compile a digital archive that will record their history.

Although the community itself has almost disappeared, the Maghen David has recently been restored and – somewhat surprisingly – has been lovingly looked after for generations by Muslim caretakers. Like his father and grandfather before him, Rabul Khan, takes great pride in his work as a custodian of the synagogue. He says there is no difference between this place of worship and his own: “Both are the House of God and you look after it as if it is your own. We do it with our hearts, whether it is a church, temple, synagogue or mosque.”

(Photo: Maghen David synagogue. Credit: Ruth Evans)

Tania Hershman is single, lives alone and likes it that way. She is the writer-in-residence in one of Europe’s largest graveyards, the Southern Cemetery, a multi-faith burial site in Manchester in the north of England. As she wanders through the gravestones she has started to wonder – who will call her 'beloved' when she dies?

Manchester has the highest percentage of single people in the UK. For Heart and Soul Tania asks how will we commemorate single people with imagination and tenderness?

Recorded over a year the programme follows Tania as she walks among the dead, talking to them – and the living – about love and memory.

Presenter: Tania Hershman

(Photo: Graves the Southern Cemetery, Manchester: Credit: Jim Dyson/Getty Images)

Richard McKinney has made an extraordinary life journey – from a US veteran who planned to bomb a mosque, to a d Muslim who prays devoutly at the very Mosque he planned for 2 years to blow up.

A veteran of the US Marines, Richard returned traumatised from combat in Afghanistan. That turned into a deep hatred of Islam. At his home in Muncie, Indiana, Richard was producing a device to blow up the town’s Mosque which he hoped will kill 200 people. But he decided to give the community he so hated ‘one more chance’. He visited the Islamic Centre, and was given a Koran to take home and read.

Just eight weeks later, he had converted and within a few years he had become President of the very Mosque he yearned to destroy.

Colm Flynn hears how Richard could have been one of America's most notorious mass murders, but is now a devout Muslim and advocate for peace and understanding.

Producer and Presenter: Colm Flynn

(Photo: Richard McKinney. Credit: Colm Flynn/BBC)

Christian communities along the Irish border are free to worship on either side of it. But some worry that the United Kingdom’s plans to leave the European Union could lead to that coming to an end

Presenter/Producer: Julia Paul

(Photo: Fra and Jonny from 'Youth With A Mission' in Rostrevor in Northern Ireland)

Growing up as a hijab-wearing football fan in Sydney, Australia wasn’t easy for Assmaah Helal. From an early age she has worn the hijab and played football. She tells us how she was already self-conscious about this outward symbol of her faith, so to play in a football match wearing it was a big deal.

Assmaah now uses her love of football to help refugees, new migrants and socially disadvantaged children in Sydney, and she speaks to them for Heart and Soul, as part of the BBC's 100 Women season, about the struggle to fit in in Australia today.

She tells us about her fight with the governing body of world football to overturn the ban on players wearing the hijab, and winning.

Presenter: Assmaah Helal

To see the 2019 list of the BBC's 100 inspiring and influential women from around the world go to www.bbc.co.uk/100women or on Facebook @BBC100Women

To come out as gay while part of the Christian church and country music is a brave thing to do.

As a teenager in deeply Christian Kansas, Chely Wright thought praying would ‘fix her’ and she would be able to lead ‘a normal life’.

In the second of three programmes for Heart and Soul as part of the BBC’s 100 Women season, Chely shares her life, explaining the massive conflict between her sexuality and her faith.

Presenter: Chely Wright

Image: Chely Wright (Credit: Michael Schwartz/Getty Images)

To see the full list of 100 inspiring and influential women from around the world for 2019, go to www.bbc.co.uk/100women or on Facebook @BBC100Women

She is called ‘the rebel monk’, but has also been called a ‘dangerous dissident’ – one of the few female monks who say they are simply carrying on a tradition started by Lord Buddha thousands of years ago. The Venerable Dhammananda is the first Thai woman to be ordained as a female monk in the deeply conservative Theravada Buddhist tradition.

Heart and Soul joins the ‘100 Women’ season running across the BBC to profile three women all making a huge impact in their field.

All the programmes are led by the subjects and Dhammananda leads us on her journey from mother of three, to TV host and academic, to wearing the saffron robes of a traditional Buddhist monk as the Abbess of the all-female Songdhammakalyani Monastery, and the role she has taken up as fighter for spiritual equality.

She tells us about the patriarchal faith and that she sees herself as a “change agent” encouraging women to make the most of their spiritual potential,

Women offer a new spiritual perspective she says that all of Buddhism can benefit from

Presenter: The Venerable Dhammananda

To see the full list of 100 inspiring and influential women from around the world for 2019, go to

From Europe to Latin America, the Catholic church is woefully short of priests. In the Amazon region of Brazil, the shortage is so dramatic that bishops are getting ready to discuss a radical solution: allowing married men to become priests, after a thousand years of priestly celibacy.

Presenter/Reporter: Blanche Girouard.

(Photo: Fr Augustin Butica, a married priest in the Greek Catholic church. Credit: Trevor Barnes)

Bandera, Texas, is the self-proclaimed Cowboy Capital of the World. It is also home to Ridin' The River Cowboy Fellowship, a cowboy church established eight years ago with a mission to connect cowboys to Christ.

(Photo: Interior of the Ridin' The River Cowboy Fellowship church taken from the stage. Credit: Victoria Ferran/BBC)

The American state of Alabama, is the new fault-line in the country's battle over abortion. Two Christian women are on polar opposites of the argument. Sarah Howell resolutely opposes abortion. The Reverend Traci Blackmon is just as resolute in her belief that abortion should be legal.

In Alabama, a virtual ban on abortion is due to become law in November. It is one of a wave of States that wants control of the procedure to be given back to them.

Despite the law on abortion getting tighter in Alabama, its largest city - Birmingham – is pressing ahead with a brand new sexual health clinic. It says it will go ahead and provide abortions even though this flies in the face of the new law.

It is against this backdrop that Sarah and Traci discuss how their faith sustains their opposing positions.