The Jewish High Holidays are a time for reflection and making amends for past wrongs.
In this spirit, ATZUM’s founder and director Rabbi Levi Lauer’s call for awareness and change to Israel’s attitude to prostitution was published in The Jerusalem Post this week.
“The bad news is that because of the unabated, enormous demand for paid sexual services (i.e. the rape and exploitation of sex slaves and prostituted persons), thousands of Israeli women, and girls as young as 13, are coerced by the ravages of poverty, incest and rape, and inhospitable homes and streets, into sexual servitude,” wrote Rabbi Lauer.
As well as laying down the facts about the wide extent of the problem, Rabbi Lauer also pointed the way to begin rectifying this shameful situation in the New Jewish Year.
“In this season of collective Jewish repentance, now is the time to put an end to this evil. Now is the time to support the legislation pending in the Knesset to criminalize the purchase of sexual services and decriminalize the provider of that dehumanization,” he wrote.
