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Condoms and tikkun olam: An Orthodox woman strives to aid sex workers in Prague
PRAGUE (JTA) — Not long after she puts away her silver Shabbat candlesticks and home-baked challah, Yael Schoultz walks through a cavernous hallway, and up a set of gray concrete stairs. Past a door, she finds a group of heavily made-up women in red and black G-strings and spike heels, listlessly beckoning men for sex in return for cash.
Schoultz, 43, spotted about 30 women at the Prague brothel floating from room to room in various states of undress — negligees, see-through bras — with accents as varied as their lipstick shades. Some are smiling, some appear bored as they play games on their phones, others are trying to woo potential clients with a simple, “Come have a good time, come to my room.”
It’s a typical Saturday night post-Shabbat routine for Schoultz, an Orthodox Jewish South African who recently launched L’Chaim, an organization dedicated to helping sex workers in the Czech Republic.
Schoultz and her colleagues engage the women with friendly banter about health and the weather, careful not to interrupt those with customers. The L’Chaim volunteers collectively carry a few hundred free condoms along with high-end soaps and hand-crafted bracelets.
“The girls always ask for extras for their friends,” Schoultz said.
Schoultz, who has been visiting Czech brothels since she moved to Prague in 2011, is not a mere purveyor of gifts. Her goal is to establish a rapport with the women she meets so that they can leave the business of sex work if they so wish. And her Jewish faith is a core driver of Schoultz’s quest to provide a better life for the sex workers.
“Some of the women have been trafficked,” she explained, referring to the term governments and human rights advocates use to describe a contemporary form of slavery. “There are girls who were tied up for days and raped, even by the police. Some might seem to be in the brothel voluntarily, but not really, because they owe a lot of money on a debt and feel sex work is only way they can pay it back.”
Dressed in black from head to toe, in what a fashion magazine might describe as modest goth, Schoultz is a veteran of global anti-trafficking efforts. A few decades ago, while teaching English in South Korea, Schoultz volunteered for an organization that was trying to stop the trafficking of North Korean women to China. At the same time, she was getting a master’s in theology and wanted to move to Europe to get her doctorate, which was possible at Prague’s Charles University.
“When I got to the Czech Republic, I started looking for people who were working on the trafficking issue and found three women: a Catholic nun and two Protestant missionaries. All of them were in their 60s,” Schoultz said.
Schoultz asked if she could join them in their visits to brothels.
“I just went in and started talking to women, about really anything. Language wasn’t a barrier because most sex workers speak English,” she recalled. “But it was a bit weird walking into these places with a nun in full habit.”
After a few months Schoultz began to feel uncomfortable — not with the sex workers, but with her philanthropic colleagues’ proselytizing and “religious agenda.”
“I wasn’t interested in giving out Virgin Mary medallions,” she said.
Schoultz, who teaches English at an international school in Prague, started her own informal volunteer group to help sex workers in 2012, while also embarking on a deeply personal Jewish journey.
Although she believes her father has “Jewish ancestry,” Schoultz was brought up in a Protestant home. Still, she long maintained a deep interest and connection to Judaism which intensified when she pursued her studies in theology. For several years, she regularly attended Orthodox services at 13th-century Old New Synagogue and volunteered for the Prague Jewish Community’s social services department before completing an Orthodox conversion in 2020 with Israeli rabbi David Bohbot. She has now begun her master’s degree in Jewish Studies at the Ashkenazium in Budapest, a division of the secular Milton Friedman University operated by the Hasidic Chabad-Lubavitch movement.
“From the beginning when I knew I wanted to make the conversion, Orthodox Judaism was something I agreed with theologically, it is where I felt most comfortable,” said Shoultz, who describes herself as Modern Orthodox.
Rabbi Dohbot praised Schoultz’s dedication. “This work she does is noble, and isn’t that what most big religions are based on? Showing love and respect for others?” he said.
Schoultz completed an Orthodox conversion to Judaism in 2020. (Courtesy of Schoultz)
Last year, Schoultz achieved another transitional milestone: obtaining Czech government recognition of L’Chaim as a registered nonprofit.
Although L’Chaim is a secular organization, Schoultz sees her work through the lens of tikkun olam, the rabbinical command to repair the world.
“I feel like as a Jewish person, you’re supposed to bring light to the world,” said Schoultz. “And the sex industry is very dark, because even if you choose to be a sex worker, it’s not a job that anybody really enjoys as the customers are often drunk or abusive.”
“It might sound strange, but I feel very connected to Hashem when I am in the brothel, because he is there for me, and for these women too,” she added, using the preferred Orthodox Hebrew term for god.
Schoultz’s co-volunteers, who are mostly not Jewish, are aware of her commitment to the faith.
“After Yael started getting serious about Judaism, she found her path, she was more complete and found her purpose,” said Natalia Synelnykova, who worked with Schoultz to launch L’Chaim. “Everyone would say that their friends are unique, but I have rarely met someone who is so human-centered as Yael, and that is definitely linked to how she sees Judaism.”
Schoultz named her new organization L’Chaim — to life, in Hebrew — as a message to those she seeks to help.
“We want the women in the brothels to have a life because a lot of them feel like they don’t have any life, like they’re barely making it,” she said.
There are about 100 brothels in Prague, according to media reports, and roughly 13,0000 sex workers in the Czech Republic, of which about half are thought to be single mothers. Although sex work is legal, pimping is not, so the brothels operate in a murky legal area that legislators have been trying to address for decades.
Once a hotspot for human trafficking, today the Czech Republic has a relatively low rate of human sex slavery according to government statistics. But Schoultz said the numbers are misleading.
“No one really knows how many trafficked women there are in the country,” she said.
A U.S. State Department report praised the Czech Republic’s efforts to limit trafficking but also noted that the country is more focused on prosecutions of criminals rather than on helping victims. Their stories stay with Schoultz.
“I meet many Nigerian women who may not be locked up in a room, but they are locked up by Juju,” she said, referring to a form of “black magic” that some Nigerian traffickers reportedly use to scare women into prostitution.
She also counsels “Romanian girls who are initially romanced by men that turn out to be traffickers.” A man will have many women he calls “wives,” and each one has a baby with him, “The women give him all their money to support the baby who he keeps as a form of collateral in Romania,” Schoultz said.
(Shoultz turned down JTA’s request for contacts of sex workers she has helped, noting that this would violate L’Chaim’s promise of confidentiality).
The Czech Republic’s leading anti-trafficking organization, La Strada, takes a different orientation towards sex work than L’Chaim, focusing on it more as a legitimate profession that should be organized and regulated.
“We believe women are fully able to decide for themselves if they want to be sex workers and our goal is to provide safety for those who do so, to help them organize, fight stigma and have the rights of all other workers,” said Marketa Hronkova, La Strada’s director. La Strada defines trafficking strictly as those who are physically coerced or blackmailed into providing labor.
Hronkova said there are many sex workers who choose their profession willingly and that it is patronizing and often damaging when those who say they want to help focus exclusively on “pushing women to exit a path they have chosen, as if they have no minds of their own.”
The alternative to sex work, for a single mother, can often put her in an even worse financial situation, she noted. “Our goal is to make sex work safe, not to get women to stop doing it,” said Hromkova.
Concerning L’Chaim, she said as long as its aim was listening to women, and not making them feel ashamed, it could be helpful. La Strada already cooperates with another Czech organization, Pleasure Without Risk, which maintains a neutral stance towards sex work and provides women with access to testing for sexually transmitted diseases as well as counseling.
L’Chaim’s goal, Schoultz explained, is to identify who might be trafficked and provide them with the confidence and practical resources to rebuild their lives. But since getting access to the women requires earning the trust of brothel owners and managers, L’Chaim doesn’t advertise itself as an anti-trafficking group.
“We show up as providing support to women in prostitution, that gets us in the door,” she reflected. L’Chaim has about a dozen volunteers.
It can take Schoultz six months of relationship building before she finds out what brought the client into sex work.
“We start by talking about her kids, talking about her dogs,” said Schoultz “and eventually their stories come out, many involving abuse, trauma and mental health problems.”
She estimated that at the 13 or so brothels she regularly visits in Prague and Brno, at least half the sex workers were not there on a fully voluntary basis.
In the future, Schoultz hopes to create trafficking awareness campaigns and help the customers of sex workers recognize the signs that a woman is working against her will.
The brothel owners are not always pleasant to deal with, Scholtz acknowledged.
“At one place an owner came behind me and kissed my neck on the back of my neck. It was really creepy,” she said.
And despite her modest dress, or tznius, in keeping with her Orthodox values, she said she was pursued by a brothel customer to participate in “group sex.” She fended him off calmly by explaining that she “offered services, but not those kinds of services.”
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UNRWA in Gaza Has Been Replaced; It’s Time to Shutter the Agency
Palestinians pass by the gate of an UNRWA-run school in Nablus in the West Bank. Photo: Reuters/Abed Omar Qusini.
The UN Relief and Works Agency — or UNRWA — in Gaza has been replaced by over a dozen other aid organizations. UNRWA’s decades-long monopoly on aid and services has finally been broken, presenting a rare opportunity for deradicalization and, eventually, peace.
What’s more, the international community now has a model for how to replace UNRWA everywhere it operates, not just in Gaza.
The UN Security Council approved President Donald Trump’s proposal to build a “Board of Peace” on November 17 that will oversee the deradicalization of Gaza and the dismantlement of Hamas’ terror state. But Trump’s vision will not succeed until UNRWA is shuttered.
UNRWA was created with a temporary mandate after Israel’s 1947-1948 War of Independence to provide aid and services to approximately 750,000 Palestinian Arabs displaced by the war.
Over the past 75 years, UNRWA’s mandate has ballooned. Not only does UNRWA continue to provide a myriad of services in the jurisdictions where Arab refugees from 1948 immigrated, but refugee status has been passed from generation to generation. As a result, what was a relatively small refugee population in 1948 (compared to other 20th century refugee populations) is today a large and growing 21st century refugee population with no end in sight. UNRWA counts 5.9 million Palestinian refugees and has an annual budget of over a billion and half dollars.
UNRWA schools teach the belief that Palestinian refugees and their millions of descendants would all return to the modern state of Israel — an outcome that would immediately erase Israel’s Jewish majority.
The focus on “return,” coupled with the well-documented glorification of terror and incitement — including arithmetic problems involving numbers of Palestinian “martyrs,” antisemitic tropes, and naming schools and soccer fields after suicide bombers — has produced generations of indoctrinated and radicalized Palestinian children.
UNRWA staff participated in the horrors of October 7, praised the violence on social media, and Israeli hostages were held captive in UNRWA facilities for months during the war.
Once Israel exposed the extent of UNRWA’s involvement in terror, Israel’s Knesset passed legislation in October 2024 to end coordination with UNRWA and to rescind the special privileges and immunities that Israel granted the organization. Israel’s actions made it difficult for UNRWA — which had used the Jewish State as its base of operations for decades — to continue delivering its services.
UNRWA advocates warned that Israel’s new law would have catastrophic consequences. It didn’t.
Israel’s justified decision to cease cooperating with UNRWA demonstrated quickly that other organizations and state actors — without the proclivity towards terror — were willing and able to step in.
UNRWA candidly describes itself as a quasi-state actor. This is true. For decades, UNRWA in Gaza provided services — like trash collection, education, and health clinics — that should be the responsibility of the state. In Gaza, this meant that Hamas outsourced its governmental obligations to UNRWA — with the international community picking up the bill — financially freeing Hamas terrorists to hoard weapons and build a terror fortress underneath Gaza.
Before October 7, UNRWA was the second biggest employer in Gaza and provided basic services like sanitation, health, and education to over a million people. After Hamas launched the war, UNRWA — swiftly announcing that it was not the terror organization’s responsibility to care for distressed Gazan civilians — went into high gear, taking over additional aid distribution functions.
In January 2025, when Trump negotiated the first ceasefire between Israel and Gaza, the UN established a new initiative with a dedicated online tracker to monitor aid entering Gaza. The tracker reports that UNRWA has not brought any aid into Gaza since January.
According to an Israeli official familiar with aid delivery in Gaza, the basic services performed by UNRWA before and during the first year of the war are now performed by other actors in the enclave. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is managing most of the waste management in the enclave. Fuel distribution is managed by the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS). The World Central Kitchen has been effective at delivering food alongside the World Food Program (WFP), which is also handling the broader logistics function for aid delivery in Gaza — a function WFP performs worldwide. UNICEF has taken a larger role in children-related humanitarian responses, and the World Health Organization (WHO) is providing medical aid to field clinics and hospitals.
This is how the rest of the world manages humanitarian crises caused by wars and natural disasters, and the correct way to manage the crisis in Gaza: with organizations that have a temporary mandate to deliver aid. Once the crisis has passed, those services should once again be the responsibility of the state.
Funding UNRWA — a self-described quasi-state — for over three quarters of a century to run services that should be the responsibility of a state government has been a calamity for Gaza and the region.
US taxpayers have historically been UNRWA’s largest donor, and have contributed over seven billion dollars to the UN agency since its creation. Congress has voiced consistent but limited support for ending UNRWA funding, and both Presidents Trump and Biden previously cut taxpayer dollars to the UN agency.
UNRWA supporters — including UNRWA’s US organization that lobbies Washington for support and funding — railed against attempts to cut funding, arguing that “UNRWA is irreplaceable,” a slogan often employed by UNRWA staff and advocates.
The reality is that UNRWA in Gaza has already been replaced.
Sadly, UNRWA’s multi-generation radicalization campaign in Gaza is not unique. The same brainwashing is happening wherever UNRWA operates, breeding terrorists and terror sympathizers across the region.
The UN and the international community can use the Gaza model to replace UNRWA’s corrosive monopoly on aid to Palestinians across the region.
The Trump administration now has an opportunity to wield its influence with other major UNRWA donors — namely the EU, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Canada, and Japan — to redirect their UNRWA funding to relief organizations that can deliver the much-needed aid and services without the radicalizing agenda. This critical reform should be implemented if the world truly wants to bring about peace.
Enia Krivine is the senior director of the Israel Program and the National Security Network at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Follow her on X @EKrivine.
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In New York City, Jews Are Accused of Breaking ‘International Law’ for Supporting Israel’s Existence
New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani holds a press conference at the Unisphere in the Queens borough of New York City, US, Nov. 5, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Kylie Cooper
Last month, New York City’s Park East synagogue hosted a talk on matters of American Jewish interest, including immigration to Israel.
Outside, a crowd of protesters raged against the event’s Jewish participants, including cries of “we need to make them scared,” “f—king Jewish pricks,” and “globalize the intifada” (a phrase the United States Congress officially recognizes as a call for violence against the Jewish people).
Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s response has been described by some Jewish leaders as “ambivalent” or “hollow.”
It was not ambivalent, and it was not hollow.
Mamdani’s statement was outright terrifying:
The Mayor-elect has discouraged the language used at last night’s protest and will continue to do so … he believes every New Yorker should be free to enter a house of worship without intimidation, and that these sacred spaces should not be used to promote activities in violation of international law.”
(Spokesperson for Mayor-elect Mamdani, November 20, 2025. Emphasis added)
International law?
A lecture at a synagogue violated international law?
To be clear, in addition to being absolutely protected by America’s First Amendment, a talk about Jewish immigration at a synagogue does not even remotely violate any international law, convention, or treaty.
It is well known that the Mayor-elect promised to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should he ever visit New York City, supposedly for reasons of “international law.” Ironically, doing so would actually violate both US Federal law as well as several of the very international laws Mamdani claims to uphold — a legal topic I’ve previously discussed in depth.
Yet in this case, the soon-to-be mayor of New York City was not accusing a foreign leader of war crimes: he was accusing Jews.
Not Israeli leaders — Jews. American Jews. New York Jews.
For attending a talk at a synagogue.
Let that sink in for a minute.
While you do, let’s recall Amsterdam, November 2024: the local Muslim population carried out an actual, modern day pogrom against visiting Israeli soccer fans, literally hunting them through the city streets. For hours, the Dutch police were nowhere to be found.
It’s important to note that Amsterdam’s city government speaks about Israel, and treats its local Jews, in a manner starkly similar to Mamdani.
Just one example: Amsterdam police have the right to refuse assignments on moral grounds. One of the assignments police frequently refuse is protecting Jewish sites, including Holland’s National Holocaust Museum. On “moral grounds.” And with the legal support of the government.
The New York City police will soon be under the command of a mayor who accuses American Jews of war crimes. In a city where violent antisemitic attacks have already reached shocking levels, the police are about to become unreliable at best, and perhaps even hostile.
Matters under the mayor’s direct authority, such as police protection, are only the beginning. Dozens of city agencies could be next.
For example, Mamdani has promised to cut New York City’s relationship with Israel’s Technion University via Cornell University. The mayor does not directly control this decision, but he does have the power to appoint members of the board of management of the Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation, which can then force Cornell into decisions against the partnership.
In the coming years, New York City will see dozens of other political appointments, some visible and others subtle, and they will impact every aspect of the City’s culture, education, and safety, for years to come.
So what can we do about it?
To answer that question, one must first understand the scope of the problem.
At a 2001 conference in Durban, South Africa, the Palestinian Authority and its various allies (including Qatar and Iran) launched what later became known as the “Diplomatic Intifada.” Their target was the generation just being born: today’s 18-24 year old cohort. Their timeframe was decades, and their budget was essentially unlimited.
I saw this tsunami of antisemitism fast approaching during the Gaza war in 2009, and I moved to Israel shortly after. But Aliyah is not a viable or attractive option for everyone. I have dedicated my career to doing everything I can to make a meaningful change on an appropriately large scale.
For your part, you can do these things: Be utterly committed to truth at any cost and speak without compromise.
Some Jewish leaders irresponsibly called Mamdani’s statement “ambivalent” or “hollow” instead of what it was: terrifying and malicious. If uncompromising honesty endangers your job, get a new one. If it endangers your place in your community, find a new community. And if it endangers your safety — move. Yes, this takes courage, maybe even sacrifice. Yes, this is blunt, hard, and perhaps even costly advice. Yet the cost of silence will ultimately be far greater. (Remember 1938?)
Raise your children (or your future children) to understand and appreciate the importance of Israel, of Judaism, and of basic respect for truth itself. Teach them to be strong, unafraid, and true to their values. Learning starts at home, values start at home, and it all starts early.
Daniel Pomerantz is the CEO of RealityCheck, an organization dedicated to deepening public conversation through robust research studies and public speaking.
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At My School and Others, Students for Justice in Palestine Continues to Erase History
Rutgers University students holding an anti-Zionist demonstration on March 19, 2024. Photo: USA Today Network via Reuters Connect
On the two-year anniversary of the Oct. 7 attacks, the University of Florida’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) hosted a vigil directly in front of our school’s library to “honor the martyrs,” where they continued to promote the genocide libel.
I asked them, “Why do this on the anniversary of the 10/7 massacre?” Almost mindlessly, as if they were still taking cues from a toolkit, they dodged the question and centered their preferred victims with: “Do you know how many Palestinians were killed on October 7th?”
There was no mention of the Nova festival or the kibbutzim. No condolences for the 1,200 innocent people murdered or the 251 taken hostage. No acknowledgment that this attack, perpetrated by Palestinian terrorists, was and still is widely supported in Palestinian society. SJP students were more interested in legitimizing their heroes by comparing Hamas to the Black Panther Party.
The US Civil Rights movement achieved its goals through nonviolent protests like sit-ins and boycotts, not stabbing attacks, blowing up public places, or calling for the annihilation of American citizens. Hamas was founded with the express goal of eradicating Israel and murdering Jews.
Since the IDF didn’t enter the war that SJP claims has been a “genocide” until 20 days later, why pick 10/7 to hold the vigil? It seems like they did so to invalidate Jewish mourning and bolster Hamas propaganda.
This kind of narrative erasure is not new for the Palestinian National Movement.
Nakba Day is held on May 15, supposedly to mark the “catastrophe” of Israel’s creation, and the embarrassment of losing the 1948 war (which they started). But on May 15, 1948, the refugee crisis that Palestinians claim to mourn hadn’t even begun. It was the day after Israel announced its independence, when five surrounding Arab armies invaded, along with help from the local population (now known as the Palestinians). Yasser Arafat chose this day for the same reason SJP chose 10/7, to overtake Jewish memory in public discourse.
Clearly, they don’t want to convince anyone based on the merits of their position. It appears they want to coerce the public into agreeing with them, which is why they responded to my question the way they did.
The histories of Palestinians and Jews are intertwined, and it is dangerous to distort part of history to fit one’s agenda. We must hold ourselves to the same standard, and acknowledge the suffering of Palestinians throughout the history of this conflict, but that doesn’t mean blaming Israel for everything. Doing so is dangerous, especially towards the Jewish students at the University of Florida (UF), which comprise nearly 20% of the undergraduate population.
There is a future in which Jewish and Palestinian voices can work together, but only when SJP is open to hearing other perspectives and participates in an actual campus dialogue. I urge members of SJP to think critically about the accusatory messages they are spreading. By spreading this propaganda, it tarnishes innocent Jewish and Zionist students, distorts truth, and makes reconciliation more difficult.
I also encourage every student to conduct their own research, and not get caught in this cycle of misinformation. By engaging effectively with both SJP and pro-Israel organizations, and doing research for themselves, a safer and more educated campus is possible.
When the peace deal was brokered and the hostages were finally returned home, I hoped to see SJP celebrating alongside their Jewish peers. It didn’t happen — but it is only when we come together to celebrate these victories and remember our shared history that we can end this cycle of violence.
David Caine is a CAMERA fellow and second-year journalism student at the University of Florida.