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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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Israel Sees Momentum in Latin America After Argentina’s Milei Officially Launches Isaac Accords
Argentine President Javier Milei meets with Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar in Buenos Aires during Saar’s diplomatic and economic visit to strengthen ties between the two countries. Photo: Screenshot
With the official launch of the Isaac Accords by Argentina’s President Javier Milei, Israel aims to expand its diplomatic and security ties across Latin America, with the initiative designed to promote government cooperation and fight antisemitism and terrorism.
Milei formally launched the Isaac Accords last week during a meeting in Buenos Aires with Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar, who has been on a regional diplomatic tour.
Modeled after the Abraham Accords — a series of historic US-brokered normalization agreements between Israel and several Arab countries, this new initiative aims to strengthen political, economic, and cultural cooperation between the Jewish state and Latin American governments.
The Argentine leader called his country a “pioneer” alongside the United States in promoting the new framework, emphasizing its role in fostering closer ties between Israel and the region across key strategic fields.
“While the vast majority of the free world decided to turn its back on the Jewish state, we extended a hand to it,” Milei said during a speech at the 90th anniversary of the Delegation of Argentine Israelite Associations (DAIA), the country’s Jewish umbrella organization.
“While the vast majority turned a deaf ear to the growth of antisemitism in their lands, we denounced it with even greater fervor, because evil cannot be met with indifference,” he continued.
Thank you
President @JMilei for your moral clarity & support. You are a true friend.
— Israel Foreign Ministry (@IsraelMFA) November 30, 2025
Shortly after Milei’s announcement, Saar praised him as “a double miracle, for Argentina and for the Jewish people,” describing his connection to Judaism and Israel as “sincere, powerful, and moving.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also praised Milei, describing his “moral clarity, vision, and courage” as signals of “a new era of common sense, mutual interests, and shared values between Israel and Latin America.”
The first phase of the Isaac Accords will focus on Uruguay, Panama, and Costa Rica, where potential projects in technology, security, and economic development are already taking shape as the initiative seeks to deepen cooperation in innovation, commerce, and cultural exchange.
In February, Argentina’s Foreign Minister Pablo Quirno will visit Israel to work with Saar and Netanyahu on advancing the initiative’s operational framework.
Milei also announced plans to relocate the country’s embassy to Jerusalem next spring, fulfilling a promise made last year, as the two allies continue to strengthen their bilateral ties.
The top Israeli diplomat commended Milei, describing his support for Israel on the international stage as “courageous and forceful.”
The Isaac Accords will also aim to encourage partner countries to move their embassies to Jerusalem, formally recognize Hamas and Hezbollah as terrorist organizations, and shift longstanding anti-Israel voting patterns at the United Nations.
Less than a year after the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Argentina became the first Latin American country to designate the Palestinian Islamist group as a terrorist organization, with Paraguay following suit earlier this year.
As Israel moves to strengthen its diplomatic and economic ties in Latin America, Saar announced on Monday that Ecuador has opened an additional diplomatic mission in Jerusalem, further bolstering their bilateral relations.
“Several Latin American countries – Guatemala, Paraguay and Honduras – have already moved their embassies to Jerusalem,” the Israeli diplomat wrote in a post on X.
“The opening of Ecuador’s office in Jerusalem is another milestone on this important path. I commend [Ecuador’s President Daniel Noboa] and the people of Ecuador for this significant decision,” he continued.
Foreign Minister @gidonsaar :
“Another diplomatic mission in our eternal capital, Jerusalem.
Together with Ecuador’s Ambassador to Israel, Cristina Ceballos, and Hebrew University President Prof. Tamir Shefer, I inaugurated Ecuador’s new Innovation Office – granted… pic.twitter.com/a4BeZi9uyN
— Israel Foreign Ministry (@IsraelMFA) December 1, 2025
Saar also announced that Bolivia has lifted visa requirements for Israelis entering the country, signaling closer cooperation between the two countries.
“This decision will allow many Israelis to visit Bolivia again after many years, enjoy its vibrant culture and remarkable scenery, and strengthen the ties between our nations,” Saar posted on X.
תודה לך, נשיא בוליביה רודריגו פז על ביטול דרישת הויזה לישראלים.
החלטה זו תאפשר לישראלים רבים לחזור לבוליביה לאחר שנים רבות, להנות מתרבותה העשירה ומנופיה עוצרי הנשימה ולחזק את הקשרים בין עמינו.
— Gideon Sa’ar | גדעון סער (@gidonsaar) December 1, 2025
President Rodrigo Paz, a center-right politician, took office this year following years of left-wing government in Bolivia during which the country severed relations with Israel. Paz’s election signaled a shift in policy toward the Jewish state.
Last week, Saar kicked off his regional diplomatic trip in Paraguay, signing a security cooperation memorandum and meeting with President Santiago Peña, whom he praised as “one of the most impressive leaders on the international stage today.”
“Paraguay is developing major defense capabilities. Israel’s defense industry has experience and capabilities that we want to share with you,” the Israeli official said during a press conference with Paraguay’s Foreign Minister Rubén Ramírez Lezcano.
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Pope Leo meets with Erdogan, says two-state solution is the ‘only’ path forward in Middle East
(JTA) — Following a visit in Turkey last week, Pope Leo XIV said that he had spoken with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan about their shared support for a two-state solution, which Leo called the “only solution” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Leo’s comments to reporters Sunday came while he traveled from Turkey to Lebanon on the papal plane as part of his first international tour since being elected to the papacy in May.
During his address, Leo thanked Erdogan, who has consistently voiced support for Hamas and fostered hostile relations with Israel, for helping coordinate the trip and for hosting him on his personal helicopter.
Asked by a reporter whether he had spoken with Erdogan about the conflict in Gaza, Leo said that the Turkish leader was “certainly in agreement” about the proposal for a two-state solution, adding that he believed that Turkey has an “important role that it could play in all of this.”
Leo also said that he hoped to play a “mediating role” in the conflict and criticized Israel for rejecting a two-state solution. (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has long rejected Palestinian statehood, and the U.S.-brokered ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas does not include provisions for a Palestinian state, though it positions itself as part of a roadmap to statehood.)
“We all know that at present Israel still does not accept this solution, but we see it is the only solution that could offer, let us say, an answer to the conflict they continue to live,” Leo said in Italian to reporters. “We are also friends of Israel, and we are trying to act as a mediating voice for both sides, helping to bring about a solution that is fair for everyone.”
In September, Leo met with Israeli President Isaac Herzog and told the leader that he believed the two-state solution was the only way out of the conflict in Gaza.
Leo’s remarks echoed similar appeals he made shortly after his election. In May, he made two public addresses where he called for a ceasefire in Gaza and decried the suffering of families in the enclave during the conflict.
On Thursday, Erdogan praised Leo’s advocacy for Palestinians and called for a Palestinian state based on the “1967 borders,” which refer to a state in the West Bank and Gaza with East Jerusalem as its capital.
“We commend (Pope Leo’s) astute stance on the Palestinian issue,” Erdogan said during an address in Ankara. “Our debt to the Palestinian people is justice, and the foundation of this is to immediately implement the vision of a two-state solution based on the 1967 borders. Similarly, preserving the historic status of Jerusalem is crucial.”
Leo’s trip to the region comes the same week that the “popemobile” that belonged to his predecessor, Pope Francis, debuted in Gaza in its retrofitted version as a mobile pediatric health clinic.
The post Pope Leo meets with Erdogan, says two-state solution is the ‘only’ path forward in Middle East appeared first on The Forward.
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Meet Zevi Eckhaus, the Jewish college football bowl-bound quarterback who prays at the 18-yard line
(JTA) — After a game, it’s not uncommon for football players to kneel in a prayer circle at midfield. But Zevi Eckhaus, the Washington State Cougars’ Jewish starting quarterback, tends to do so in a particular spot on the gridiron.
“Every game, I go to the 18-yard line, get down on a knee, and pray,” Eckhaus said, referring to the number that has a special place in Jewish tradition.
“Every time I put on my pads and go outside and throw a football, I know that’s with God’s help,” the 6-feet, 209-pound quarterback told The Cholent, a newsletter in Seattle, in a recent interview.
On Saturday, Eckhaus led the Cougars’ offense to a 32-8 win, clinching a berth in a Division I college football bowl game. That game will be the final one at the collegiate level for Eckhaus, a redshirt senior.
“I’d love to play football as long as I possibly can,” Eckhaus told The Cholent. While there’s been no buzz around Eckhaus as an NFL prospect, the Canadian Football League’s Montreal Alouettes have secured his negotiation rights, should he choose to go north of the border.
Eckhaus was raised in an Orthodox Jewish household, attending the Chabad-affiliated Cheder Menachem Los Angeles through elementary and most of middle school. Students at Cheder Menachem learned Jewish text for most of the school day, then crammed “two hours of what they called English, which was essentially math, science, everything kind of in a bunch,” he told Cougfan.com last year. (The school’s website says it provides “an exemplary well rounded Judaic and general academic education.”)
Eckhaus said he “started davening with tefillin” when he was 13. He went away from it for a while, but said that, “Thankfully, I’ve had interactions in my life that brought me back to davening every single day with Rashi and Rabbeinu Tam” — that is, the two distinct sets of tefillin worn by Chabad and other particularly stringent Orthodox movements.
Eckhaus said the student-athlete lifestyle doesn’t lend itself to being observant.
“Shabbos is still tricky because we play on Saturdays,” he said in the recent interview. “Eating kosher all the time is also hard because of the cafeteria and being at the facility most of the day.”
But Eckhaus said he’s found a balance between the rigorous schedule as a Division I quarterback and finding time for prayer and Jewish community.
“I wake up every morning and put on tefillin. I read mishnayos every week,” he said, referring to the foundational collection of Jewish legal theory. “There’s a small Hillel group here I can meet with sometimes. I try to keep as much as I can with my religion.”
There’s not much of a Jewish community in Pullman, Washington, but Eckhaus said the rabbi from nearby Spokane occasionally comes to town and organizes events.
“If he does that, I usually try to get involved with that,” he told Cougfan.com. “The Jewish students I stay in contact with, I try to get involved with them.”
Last season, the Cougars played against Fresno State on Yom Kippur. Eckhaus was not yet the starting quarterback, but was still present on the sidelines — and still observing the sacred day.
“I didn’t have any form of technology,” he told Cougfan.com later that year. “I didn’t eat or drink for 25 hours, and Coach [Jake] Dickert even went out of his way to have a private room set aside for me after the game for me to finish out the final prayer.” This year, Eckhaus said he was cleared to miss a practice held during Yom Kippur.
While the schedule can at times conflict with his religious observance, Eckhaus said he’s gotten no trouble from his teammates.
“Everybody comes from different backgrounds, families, upbringings, religions,” he said. “There are so many differences on a football team, yet still so much love, trust, and connection because of what you go through together.”
Eckhaus has previously been teammates with two Palestinian offensive linemen, and said “those guys were some of the nicest to me.”
“There’s no bickering or tension around religion, at least not in my experience,” Eckhaus told The Cholent.
After spending three years at Bryant University in Rhode Island — during which he was named the conference’s 2023 Offensive Player of the Year — Eckhaus transferred to Washington State in 2024. A backup all season, Eckhaus was thrust into the starting role for last year’s Holiday Bowl because the Cougars’ starter entered the transfer portal.
“It’s pretty cool that this game will be on Hanukkah,” Eckhaus said ahead of that bowl game, which they went on to lose 52-35 to the Syracuse Orange.
There are few Jewish players in NCAA Division I football. The most notable among them currently is Jake Retzlaff, the former quarterback at Brigham Young University, affiliated with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Retzlaff transferred to Tulane after he drew a suspension for violating the school’s famously strict honor code. The suspension followed allegations of sexual assault in a civil lawsuit that was later dismissed and Retzlaff’s admission that he had engaged in premarital sex, which BYU prohibits. Tulane is currently ranked 24th in the country.
Sam Salz, meanwhile, became likely the first Orthodox player to appear in a Division I NCAA football game last year, and spent three years as a walk-on with the Texas A&M Aggies.
Eckhaus took over the Cougars’ starting quarterback role four weeks into this season, and has registered 1,760 passing yards, 20 total touchdowns and nine interceptions. The date and opponent of Washington State’s bowl game will be announced Dec. 7.
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