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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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Netanyahu to confront Mamdani’s call to arrest him in U.N. address this week
(JTA) — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday accused New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani of supporting Hamas and inciting violence against Jews, setting up a showdown between the Israeli leader and one of the most prominent American pro-Palestinian politicians ahead of Netanyahu’s visit to the city.
Netanyahu said he would respond to Mamdani’s criticism of him and Israel during his speech at the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday, when he will visit New York for the first time since Mamdani took office.
Mamdani on Monday renewed his demand for the arrest of Netanyahu, who he called “a war criminal and an architect of a horrific genocide of the Palestinian people” in an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour. He acknowledged that he did not have the authority to carry out a warrant for Netanyahu issued by the International Criminal Court, but said the warrant should still be “honored” to protect “accountability” to international laws.
“If the International Criminal Court deems someone worthy of an arrest because of a violation of those laws, then who are we to say that anyone should be above that?” said Mamdani.
Netanyahu responded in a video statement, “Shame on you for supporting the Hamas terrorist monsters who butchered our people. Shame on you for inciting riots against New York Jews.” A number of prominent New York Jewish figures have asked Mamdani to tamp down his rhetoric about Israel, linking it to rising violent attacks on Jews. Mamdani has said that he is mayor for all New Yorkers, including Jews, and denounces antisemitism.
“I’m coming to the U.N., I’m going to tell the truth about our heroic soldiers, and I’m going to tell the truth about you,” added Netanyahu.
Mamdani pledged during his mayoral campaign last year that he would seek to arrest Netanyahu if he visited, but admitted in July that the city could not legally do so.
The ICC issued its warrant for Netanyahu in 2024, accusing him of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza. The United States and Israel are not signatories of the treaty that created the ICC in 2002 and do not recognize its jurisdiction.
Netanyahu has prominently featured Mamdani in campaign ads as he currently seeks reelection in Israel, framing the mayor as both a pro-terror extremist and a leader reminiscent of Nazi Germany.
Netanyahu is set for one of his shortest trips to the United States, where he is not slated to meet with President Donald Trump, according to The Jerusalem Post. He is currently scheduled to leave New York on the same day he arrives. Protests are expected both outside the United Nations and inside during Netanyahu’s speech, which last year saw representatives from dozens of countries walk out.
Meanwhile, Mamdani had his third meeting with Trump on Monday, continuing a rapport between the two populist leaders on opposite ends of the political spectrum. Despite their stark differences on issues including immigration enforcement, Trump praised Mamdani during a press conference on the lawn of Gracie Mansion.
“I want him to be a great mayor, and he’s certainly got potential,” Trump told reporters before shaking Mamdani’s hand and patting his arm.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Netanyahu to confront Mamdani’s call to arrest him in U.N. address this week appeared first on The Forward.
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Could going to synagogue help or hurt a Jewish candidate? This poll offers a clue
Voters may react differently to a Jewish politician who publicly practices their faith than to one who simply identifies as Jewish, a new poll found. The distinction could matter for Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, a possible 2028 presidential candidate who has made his Jewish faith central to his public life and service.
The Politico poll of 2,002 U.S. adults showed that Democratic voters were less likely to vote for a candidate who regularly attends synagogue than for a candidate not practicing a religion or attending services once a year. Among Republicans, however, a candidate who regularly attends synagogue performed better than one who attends only once a year.
The survey, conducted online in partnership with the London-based polling firm Public First between August 8 and 14, asked respondents to choose between hypothetical candidates with different characteristics, including political ideology, age, race, profession, sexual orientation and religious practice. The sample has a reported margin of error of plus or minus 2.2%.
The poll offers a window into how religious observance may shape the way voters view a Jewish candidate. In an earlier poll conducted by the same firm in May, among 2,038 voters, candidates were identified simply by religion rather than how often or where they worshipped. Being identified as Jewish hurt a hypothetical candidate among voters in both parties compared with being identified as Christian.
The findings could be particularly relevant to Shapiro, the popular Pennsylvania governor running for reelection this fall. He maintains a traditional Conservative Jewish lifestyle, keeps kosher and is a longtime member of Beth Sholom Congregation in Elkins Park, outside Philadelphia. In his recent memoir, Where We Keep the Light, Shapiro detailed experiences shaped by and tied closely to his Jewish identity, including his vetting as a vice presidential candidate in 2024.
Shapiro has been viewed as a potential first Jewish president since his gubernatorial campaign in 2022 and is one of three prominent Jewish Democrats — along with Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker and former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel — mentioned as possible 2028 presidential candidates.
Religious identity, particularly Christianity, has become more central in Republican politics since President Trump returned to the White House in 2025. Trump and his Cabinet have made religious faith a prominent part of his administration’s agenda. He created a White House Faith Office to work with religious organizations and established a Justice Department task force focused specifically on what the administration calls anti-Christian bias. At the same time, an increasingly vocal faction on the far right has made Christian nationalism and antisemitism central to its politics.
The Politico poll does not explain why Republican voters responded differently to Jewish candidates based on how often they attended synagogue. But the gap aligns with the broader split in positions among conservatives who have warmly embraced visibly religious and politically conservative Jews, while criticizing liberal or less observant Jews over their politics and commitment to Judaism.
Trump has repeatedly drawn that distinction himself. During the 2024 election, for example, he said that Jewish Americans who vote for Democrats “hate their religion.”
The post Could going to synagogue help or hurt a Jewish candidate? This poll offers a clue appeared first on The Forward.
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Nazi imagery nothing new for crypto casino behind Orlando fight with swastika flags and Hitler salutes
(JTA) — Nazi salutes. A swastika flag. Fights in the stands. They were all part of the scene at a recent combat sports event in Orlando that pitted an Israeli Jew against an avowed racist with SS bolts tattooed on his chest – and ended with the latter mocking his defeated foe as “a short little f–king Jew prick.”
The condemnation that followed the Aug. 29 event was aimed in a number of directions: at Paul Miller, the fighter who performed the Hitler salute after his win; at the attendees who returned the salute and displayed the Nazi flag; and at the Kia Center, the city-owned arena best known as the home of the NBA’s Orlando Magic, which hosted the fight night.
Politicians were shocked by the display and wrote statements condemning the event — but the Nazi symbols were nothing new for Duel, the online cryptocurrency casino behind the promotion.
Founded last year and billing itself as “the first casino that gives a f–k,” Duel has used Nazi symbols and racist language in its gambling programming. And its owner, Ossi Ketola, a Finnish high-stakes poker player, is himself a self-described First Amendment absolutist with his own history of racially charged comments. He celebrated his free speech devotion just one week after the Orlando event, in a social media post featuring a photo of himself with Donald Trump Jr.
One of Duel’s blackjack dealers, Nelli Levonyan, has worn a Nazi outfit with a swastika armband on multiple occasions while dealing cards on the blackjack stream. In a skit from the blackjack table that circulated online, a man, dressed up as an Orthodox Jew and holding an Israeli flag, attacked Levonyan by throwing coins at her. Levonyan’s character then sprayed something at the Jewish man — “Gassing!” he yelled — and said, “Go away from me, you dirty kike.”
In another blackjack stream, the dealer imitated one of the two San Diego mosque shooters, who killed five people in May. Levonyan has sung the lyrics to “Heil Hitler,” the Ye (formerly Kanye West) song, during a stream. She has also appeared alongside Miller while hosting the card game.
Earlier this month, Ketola joined a neo-fascist rally in Helsinki staged by the far-right party Sinimusta Liike, or the Blue-and-Black Movement. Ketola, who was dressed in a Spongebob costume, livestreamed the rally and posted the footage with the title “Saving white Finland.” Speaking about immigrants, he said that people “need to be educated about how the genes work, and how these people realistically cannot be integrated here.”
He then attended an anti-fascist rally held elsewhere in Helsinki simultaneously, prompting left-wing demonstrators to chase him and his video crew back to their car. Ketola could be heard off-camera yelling “Sieg heil” as they drove away.
“What f–king violent pussies. Imagine what f–ing leftists,” Ketola said after taking off the Spongebob costume. “You see? These right-wing people, white people, the most friendly people. I just walked there, we didn’t say anything, we didn’t do anything — we go to these leftists and they try to f–ing attack us. F–ing dumb stupid f–ing n–ers.”
The following night, Ketola attended the dinner with Trump and about a dozen others in Tallinn, Estonia, hosted by Studioworks, a company that develops software for online casino sites. Ketola posted a photo of himself and the U.S. president’s son on Instagram, and wrote that he discussed “Duel, the state of the world and current political climate with him and his staff.”
“The political situations in our respective countries have become increasingly similar, with a rising tide of violence and radical leftism in both America and Finland,” Ketola wrote. “As a firm 1st amendment absolutist and an individual with many values that coincide with Republicans and Donald Trump himself, this was a great chance to align on many things important to both.”
Neither the Trump Organization, Miller, Ketola nor Levonyan responded to requests for comment.
Duel was founded last summer and has featured some prominent personalities on its streams, including boxing great Mike Tyson — who told Levonyan, “You dumb b–h, you like Hitler” — and the “looksmaxxing” influencer Braden Peters, who is known as Clavicular.
The fight night that it organized and promoted in Orlando was its first foray into combat sports, and made for the company’s biggest splash yet. It also caught the attention of at least one watchdog and a local lawmaker.
“Right after the event there was a lot of criticism put on the venue, which didn’t have much responsibility in this, and not enough eyes on the people who actually made it happen,” Mark Pitcavage, senior fellow at the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. (The city had said that, as an operator of public venues, it “cannot deny access because we disagree with the political ideology, opinion or perspective, regardless of the message.”)
State Rep. Anna Eskamani called for the Florida Athletic Commission to revoke Duel Arena’s license. The commission’s members were appointed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has not commented on the event. The governor’s office did not respond to multiple requests for comment from JTA.
DeSantis’ immediate predecessor and fellow Republican, U.S. Senator Rick Scott, posted that the event was “utterly disturbing” and that “Antisemitism has NO PLACE in Florida.”
Pitcavage said that combat sports are “a draw for far-right extremists and white supremacists” who often view themselves as “white warriors.” He noted, however, that they make up a small portion of the participants and fans.
“It’s not at all surprising that some of them will get into various types of what they would consider manly, or warrior-like athletics,” he said.
Duel’s involvement in the Orlando event put the intersection of online gambling sites and far-right ideologies on his radar. “It’s something we’re starting to look into,” Pitcavage said. He noted that Duel is registered and licensed offshore on the autonomous island of Anjouan, making it more difficult to investigate.
Eskamani, who is running for mayor of Orlando, told JTA that Duel should not be allowed to operate in Florida, citing reasons that she says would beat the city’s First Amendment defense.
“These offshore cryptocurrency — I mean, there are so many red flags in how this entity is operating that from a purely financial security position for a public venue, I would not want to accept a reservation,” Eskamani said.
Duel set and promoted the matchups on the fight card, which included the kickboxing match between Miller, who goes by the moniker “Gypsy Crusader,” and his fellow influencer Ben “King” Azoulay.
Miller, who has made numerous appearances on Duel’s casino games streams, has been known to use racial slurs and denigrate minority groups in his online content. He was convicted in 2021 of felony weapons charges, and sentenced to 41 months in federal prison. He had posted about initiating a race-based civil war.
During a livestreamed conversation with Adin Ross, a Jewish streamer who has interviewed or maintained friendly relationships with controversial figures including Nick Fuentes and Andrew Tate, Miller said there are no exceptions in his feelings toward Jews.
“I respect you for having an opinion that is different from the Jews,” Miller told Ross. “But that doesn’t mean that I would not laugh if I see you in a gas chamber.”
Clips from the Orlando event showed Miller performing the Nazi salute twice after his victory — something he has done after winning previous fights — prompting a number of attendees to do the same. One fan brought a Nazi Germany flag and waved it in his seat.
“He’s not a tough guy, he’s not an alpha male. He’s a short little f–ing Jew prick,” Miller declared about his opponent Azoulay in his post-fight interview, eliciting some cheers from the crowd.
U.S. Rep. Randy Fine, the Jewish Republican firebrand whose district includes Palm Coast and Daytona Beach, posted a video of the Nazi flag being unfurled and wrote, “This is not a joke and it is not edgy. The guy who did this is old enough to know exactly what that symbol means and to know that it’s not funny. We will make an example out of him.”
Asked what he meant by making an example of the attendee, Fine told JTA, “We put the video out so he would be recognized and be held publicly accountable. Most folks are unwilling to associate with Nazis.”
Cheering Miller on ringside was Jake Shields, a former mixed martial artist-turned far-right influencer who has espoused conspiracy theories about Jews and Israel. Shields wore a shirt reading “FCK ISRL.” Myron Gaines, a prominent streamer who has spread similar conspiracy theories and performed Nazi salutes, was in the stands, and told Miller before the fight, “You fight for the goyim,” according to clips shared on social media.
Pitcavage said he has been tracking a trend of the far-right getting involved in combat sports since the late 1990s, as mixed martial arts and UFC became a more mainstream phenomenon and amateur gyms became widespread and increasingly accessible.
The ADL has flagged that in recent years “active clubs,” or “localized white supremacist crews” that gather for fight training, have become more common. The ADL writes that these groups “see themselves as fighters training for an ongoing war against a system that they claim is deliberately plotting against the white race.”
As news outlets covered backlash to the Orlando fight night, Duel issued its own statement saying it was horrified “to learn that a group of viewers were displaying symbols of hate at our event.” The company criticized the city’s “shocking remarks that the ‘First Amendment’ applies and that ‘free speech’ is permitted at their arena,” and pledged to “work with local activist groups to push back on this and ensure that this kind of hate does not fester ever again.”
The statement appeared to be an example of Duel trolling with deadpan, buttoned-up language. Before the fight, Ketola had similarly released a promotional video that appeared to be condemning Miller’s views. “Paul Miller is a Nazi. Being a Nazi is bad,” Ketola narrated, over footage of him shaking his head. “We cannot support this. The only reason we are allowing him to fight is to ensure the good guys get to add another victory to their record.”
Then, after Miller’s win, Duel’s Instagram account left a comment that told a different story.
“The good guys won,” Duel wrote.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Nazi imagery nothing new for crypto casino behind Orlando fight with swastika flags and Hitler salutes appeared first on The Forward.
