Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Jewish Women Take On Human Trafficking

The National Council of Jewish Women has partnered in an online petition calling on President Obama to fund programs that fight human trafficking and assist victims.

The petition with Polaris, a global nongovermental organization, can be found at change.org.

Titled “Fight Human Trafficking in the United States: It Happens Here,” the petition implores Obama “to support strong funding to fight human trafficking in our community.”

In a statement Tuesday, NCJW CEO Nancy Kaufman said, “A lot of people consider human trafficking something that happens ‘over there,’ in faraway places, to other people’s children and friends. But vulnerable people are being coerced and trapped into modern-day slavery every day in the United States, including an estimated 100,000 sexually exploited children every year.

“Modern-day slavery is growing. Today, there are more slaves in the world than at any other time in history,” the statement said. This fall, NCJW launched an awareness program called Exodus: NCJW’s Anti-Sex Trafficking Initiative that provides resources, advocacy and programming throughout the country.

With Polaris, NCJW is reaching out to affected people in 11 states that the groups believe have weak victim assistance laws: Arizona, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Indiana, Wisconsin, Michigan, Rhode Island, Virginia, South Carolina and Florida.

“Taking to heart the Jewish community’s history as slaves in Egypt and our belief that no one should be exploited as Jews once were, NCJW is expanding our enduring mission to improve the quality of life for women, children and families, and to safeguard individual rights and freedom,” Kaufman said.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.