Uncategorized
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.”
—
The post Condoms and tikkun olam: An Orthodox woman strives to aid sex workers in Prague appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
For a few terrifying minutes, Israelis were heroes again
For a few terrifying minutes aboard a Flydubai flight bound for Tel Aviv on Wednesday, a group of Israeli passengers found themselves with a problem that was considerably more immediate than the usual arguments about Israel. Someone in the cockpit had become violent, the airplane was descending rapidly and the people aboard had to figure out what to do. They did.
According to the emerging account, Israeli passengers helped overpower the attacker and restrain him, while pilots traveling as passengers assisted in getting the aircraft safely onto the ground in Saudi Arabia. Other passengers provided medical assistance. A flight that could have ended in catastrophe instead became one of those extraordinary stories in which ordinary people discover that the few seconds available for a decision are the only seconds that matter.
There is something refreshing about the simplicity of the story. The passengers were confronted with a danger that required immediate action, and some of them acted. Israelis watching the story unfold saw a familiar national trait emerge in circumstances where slogans had very little use.
Former Israeli spokesman Eylon Levy captured the comic quality of it perfectly. “Overall, the probability that a plane full of Israelis will contain a trained assault team, two additional pilots, and, statistically, at least one cardiac surgeon, psychologist, lawyer, and diamond dealer is substantially higher than 50%.”
The joke survives the caution that is always needed with stereotypes because anyone who has spent time around Israelis recognizes the type. Put 180 Israelis in a metal tube in the skies and you have a statistically improbable concentration of people who have served in the military, flown aircraft, treated patients, run companies, handled emergencies, argued with authority and developed the conviction that whatever has gone wrong can probably be fixed if everyone stops panicking and starts doing something.
For Israelis, that quality has long been part of the national mythology. The country was built around the idea that its people would have to improvise their way through circumstances that seemed to offer very little room for error. The mythology produced its own cliches: the engineer who can repair anything, the doctor who appears when somebody needs one, the stranger who immediately assumes responsibility because waiting for an official response seems inefficient.
In the military, it is the officer who shouts “after me” – aharai! – rather than leading from behind.
This is the Israel that was admired after the 1967 Six Day War – or for the 1977 commando raid on Entebbe Airport that rescued over 100 hostages held by pro-Palestinian hijackers.
Sadly, much of the world has encountered a very different Israeli stereotype in recent years. Israelis have increasingly become symbols in arguments about war, occupation, nationalism and international law. Israel itself has become increasingly isolated, and Israelis have experienced insults and worse while traveling abroad.
October 7 added another layer to the picture. The country that had spent decades cultivating an image of military competence suddenly had to confront an astonishing failure of intelligence and security. The image of the Israeli who always knows what to do became harder to sustain when the country itself had been caught so badly unprepared.
And Israel has been widely and wildly vilified around the world – by the far left, by the far right, by antisemites of every stripe and activists who have made Zionism a dirty word and have turned Israel into an avatar for everything that is wrong in the world.
Then came the FlyDubai flight.
The flight’s landing in Israel was top news all over the world. CNN reported the event as a miraculous act of heroism. Even The Guardian, not known for its pro-Israel coverage of late, gushed about the “daring rescue.”
That may explain why Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu moved so quickly to meet the returning passengers. Whatever one thinks of Netanyahu’s politics, his instincts for symbolism are unusually sharp. For a man far behind in the polls ahead of Oct. 27, it was a godsend. He understood the importance of attaching himself to bravery.
There is an old Israeli sensibility that can be difficult to explain to people who have never lived there. It combines self-confidence with improvisation, anxiety with humor and a stoicism before dire circumstances.
The Flydubai passengers offered a particularly vivid demonstration of that quality.
But there is a larger lesson here, although it is a modest one. Countries become caricatures when their people are reduced to the arguments surrounding them. Israelis have been seen increasingly through the prism of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and sometimes through the actions of the government that happens to represent them. A plane full of passengers offers a different perspective.
They were scared. They were ordinary. They were resourceful. Some of them were brave. And the world was reminded of another side of Israel.
The post For a few terrifying minutes, Israelis were heroes again appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Ohio GOP gubernatorial nominee appeared at church whose pastor called modern Judaism ‘fake’
Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican nominee for governor of Ohio, campaigned twice at a church whose pastor compared COVID-era restrictions to Nazi Germany and whose members took part in a protest outside the home of a Jewish state lawmaker who described it as an antisemitic act of intimidation.
Ramaswamy, 41, is running against Amy Acton, a Jewish Democrat who faced antisemitic attacks and Nazi comparisons while serving as Ohio’s health director during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Republican candidate most recently appeared on May 21 for a campaign event at Liberty Valley Church in Northfield, which describes itself as a “Bible-Believing Non Denominational Patriotic Church,” for a discussion about “The Future of Religious Liberty.” Ramaswamy appeared alongside the church’s pastor, the Rev. Jeff Tauring, who has preached there for more than two decades, according to the church’s website.
The church drew attention in 2021 after several members showed up outside the home of Casey Weinstein, a Democratic state representative who is Jewish, during protests over the coronavirus restrictions. Weinstein described it as a “show of force” intended to intimidate him and said the explicitly Christian messages — including a “kneel before the cross” banner and a call to “make Casey Weinstein be better” — directed at the home of a Jewish lawmaker made the demonstration antisemitic
Tauring, in an interview with the Cleveland Jewish News at the time, denied that the demonstration was antisemitic or intended to intimidate Weinstein, saying his church supported Jews and Israel. But he added that it was an obligation of his congregation to speak out, likening the vaccine mandates and other government health policies to the policies of the Nazi regime that preceded the Holocaust. “We feel like if somebody would have stood up for the Jews earlier, and it should have been the church, if they would have done that earlier,” he said, “I’m not sure if the catastrophe would have happened.”
Earlier this year during a sermon, Tauring described the modern practice of Judaism as “fake” and called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a ”wicked person” because “he doesn’t believe in Jesus Christ and he should.”
At the Ramaswamy event in May, Josh Mandel, a Jewish ally of the pastor who campaigned on “Judeo-Christian values” during his failed Senate bid against JD Vance in 2022, told the audience that Ramaswamy would govern according to the values practiced inside the church.
“I know Vivek. He’s not just going to campaign in churches once he’s governor; he’s going to keep coming back,” Mandel said, according to a recording of the event obtained by the Forward. “And he’s going to govern based on what is worshiped right here in this church.”
Ramaswamy also appeared at the church last December.
In an interview on Wednesday at the campaign’s request, Mandel said he organized the event at the church and described the pastor and Ramaswamy as great friends of the Jewish people.
He wasn’t familiar with the pastor’s past remarks and didn’t address them when the Forward shared them.
Mandel shared a clip of Ramaswamy answering a question at the event about antisemitism, in which he called it a “cancer” in society and said it must be confronted on both the left and by “some people who claim to be on the right.”
“I think that a society that turns towards blaming a successful group of people in our country and in many other cultures in our history is a society that actually is allergic to success,” Ramaswamy said at the town hall. “And a society that is allergic to success, a real victim of that is not just the Jewish people — who are the recipients of that hatred. The real victim is the entire society itself, because it is a cancer that will eat that nation from within.”
Ramaswamy’s complicated record with Jewish voters
Ramaswamy, a biotech entrepreneur who has never served in public office, has had his own complicated relationship with Jewish voters and has taken controversial positions on Israel.
During his 2024 presidential campaign, Ramaswamy broke with much of the Republican field by proposing that the United States eventually phase out its annual $3.8 million military assistance to Israel after the current agreement expired in 2028. He later softened that position, telling the Forward that aid should end only when Israel was strong and secure enough that it no longer needed American assistance.
Aligned with the “America First” worldview, Ramaswamy developed close relationships with figures like Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host who has promoted antisemitic tropes and conspiracy theories, associated with white nationalists, and called for stripping citizenship from Americans who served in the Israeli army. Ramaswamy was reportedly on a shortlist to become secretary of state in Donald Trump’s second administration, supported by Donald Trump Jr., tech billionaire Elon Musk and Carlson.
Ramaswamy, a Hindu who was a member of Shabtai, a Jewish leadership society at Yale founded in 1996 as an alternative to the “secret societies” at the university, also faced criticism from Jewish groups for appearing on a podcast hosted by Albert Faleski, known online as An0maly, who had promoted antisemitic stereotypes and conspiracy theories. Ramaswamy told the Forward at the time that he had not known about the host’s statements before appearing on the show and argued that speaking with someone did not amount to endorsing that person’s views.
Jewish conservatives and Republican officials have spent much of the past year publicly confronting antisemitism within parts of the MAGA movement, particularly the growing influence of Carlson, Nick Fuentes and other online personalities who attack Israel and traffic in antisemitic conspiracy theories. An increasingly vocal faction on the far right has made Christian nationalism and antisemitism central to its politics.
Acton’s experience with antisemitism
The tension is particularly relevant in Ohio, where Ramaswamy is running against a Jewish Democrat who has spoken openly about her faith and has faced antisemitic attacks. If elected, Acton would become Ohio’s first Jewish governor.
While serving as Ohio’s health director during the COVID-19 pandemic, Acton became a target of antisemitic abuse and Nazi comparisons as she enforced the state’s public health restrictions.
Earlier this month, an armed man lunged toward Acton while she was speaking at a campaign event. The suspect, Partick Havas, was charged with assault, disorderly conduct and inducing panic. Authorities did not specify whether they believed the incident was motivated by antisemitism. Ramaswamy’s campaign condemned the episode, calling political violence “completely unacceptable.”
While the state has been governed by a Republican since 2021 and has been leaning GOP in recent elections, recent polls show Acton expanding her lead over Ramaswamy.
The post Ohio GOP gubernatorial nominee appeared at church whose pastor called modern Judaism ‘fake’ appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
What is flydubai and will it continue to link Israel and the Emirates?
(JTA) — TEL AVIV – The apparent hijacking attempt aboard flydubai Flight 1073 has put a spotlight on the Emirati airline, which has become a main air link connecting Israelis to the rest of the world.
The incident could also test the relationship between Israel and one of the airlines that has come to symbolize the ties forged by the 2020 Abraham Accords, in which the United Arab Emirates was one of a small number of Arab countries that recognized Israel.
Flydubai, a Dubai government-owned airline, began operating in 2009 and launched regular flights to Israel in 2020, shortly after the UAE and Israel established diplomatic relations.
When war broke out in Israel in October 2023, many foreign airlines suspended flights to the country for extended periods. Flydubai and other UAE airlines continued operating flights to and from Israel through much of the conflict, providing an important connection for Israelis seeking to travel abroad at a time when international air service to the country was severely reduced.
The airline has also become an important hub for Israelis traveling beyond the UAE itself. Through Dubai, passengers can connect to destinations across Asia, Africa and other regions. The airline operates dozens of flights between Tel Aviv and Dubai each week.
According to Ben Gurion Airport data for August, flydubai carried roughly 90,000 passengers during the month. Since the beginning of 2026, more than 420,000 passengers have flown with the airline to or from Ben Gurion, accounting for roughly 4% of the airport’s international passenger traffic and placing it third among international airlines operating at the airport by passenger volume.
The incident aboard Flight 1073 could now put that relationship under scrutiny.
Israel’s Transportation Minister Miri Regev has reportedly asked Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to immediately suspend flydubai flights to Israel until the circumstances of Wednesday’s incident are clarified, according to Israeli news outlet Ynet.
Regev said flydubai had violated the countries’ aviation agreement, which she described as requiring pilots operating flights to Israel to be citizens of countries with which Israel maintains diplomatic relations. Israeli and international media have reported that the co-pilot who instigated the incident was an Omani national.
Former Israeli Ambassador to the UAE Amir Hayek pushed back against calls to suspend the flights, however. In a post on X, Hayek wrote that flydubai and Etihad were the only two airlines in the world that continued flying to Israel “even during the most difficult times,” and argued that the UAE and the airline should be allowed to fully investigate what happened rather than face action based on speculation.
“I trust them,” he wrote.
The episode comes as Flydubai continues to expand its global network. The airline said this month that it was operating an average of 2,200 flights a week and serving more than 125 destinations in 56 countries. Its partnership with the major airline Emirates gives passengers access to a combined network of more than 214 unique destinations in more than 100 countries, with more than 4,600 possible connections through Dubai.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post What is flydubai and will it continue to link Israel and the Emirates? appeared first on The Forward.
