ATZUM’s Task Force on Human Trafficking’s Natasha Mann recently presented three talks about prostitution to Jewish teens.

Natasha’s topic was ‘Prostitution, Human Trafficking, and the Law’ at Noam Camp, an annual Jewish youth program. The first talk was aimed at a group of around 30 youth leaders, aged from seventeen upwards.

Afterwards, the leaders asked her to present talks to the two camps she worked with in France – one of which consisted of 14-year-olds, and the other of 15-year-olds. Each group consisted of around 60 teenagers.

“I was concerned that they were too young to process the subject, or to take it seriously,” Natasha remarked, “but they surprised me. They listened quietly, asked mature and thoughtful questions, and then many of them approached me afterwards to talk about it.”

Learn more about ATZUM’s Task Force on Human Trafficking.

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.

Read the full Jerusalem Post article here