JANUARY 26 • 2023 | 11

J

anuary is National Human Trafficking 
Prevention Month. Motivated by our 
own traumatic history of Joseph being 
sold into slavery to the Exodus from Egypt, 
many in the Jewish community here in 
Detroit and around the nation have taken 
up the cause of fighting and preventing 
human trafficking. 
Organizations such as the National 
Council of Jewish Women (NCJW), 
Polaris, Sanctum House and others are 
ramping up efforts to educate the public 
about this criminal industry, teaching 
people to recognize the signs that a person 
is being trafficked and fighting to create 
environments and legislation that will ease 
the way for those reclaiming their 
lives after surviving sex or labor 
trafficking. 
“Even the Haftarah we read 
each Yom Kippur from Isiah 
speaks about breaking the yoke of 
slavery,
” said Robert Beiser, strategic 
initiatives director of sex trafficking 
for Polaris, a national 
organization that keeps 
statistics and data on 
human trafficking by 
operating the National 
Human Trafficking 
Hotline. “Fighting 
against human 
trafficking is a Jewish 
value with roots that go as deep as 
the Exodus from Egypt and carry on 
through the generations that Jews 
endured persecution and captivity, 
all the way up to the Holocaust. It 
is our calling and responsibility to not look 
away and to take action against modern-
day slavery.
” 
According to the National Human 
Trafficking Hotline, there were 1,186 
signals to the hotline of trafficking activity 
that originated in Michigan in 2021. The 
victims were predominantly women, 
with 252 females and 28 males caught in 
sex trafficking activity. There were 295 
identified cases that involved 429 victims in 
total. The locations and nature of the acts 
were varied. 
Nationwide, the Hotline received 50,123 
tips from calls, texts and online chats in 
2021 alone. Since its creation in 2007, 
Polaris has identified 82,301 cases of human 

trafficking that involved 164,839 victims. 
The Polaris Project noted the sharp 
increase of trafficking of people in known 
relationships during 2020. For example, in 
2020, among all forms of trafficking whose 
recruitment relationships were known 
(4,142), the proportion of victims recruited 
by a family member or caregiver increased 
significantly — from 21% of all victims in 
2019 to 31% in 2020 — a 47% increase. 
In addition, the proportion recruited by 
intimate partners jumped 21% — from 22% 
in 2019 to 27% in 2020. 
In labor trafficking situations, of the 
1,572 national victims whose recruitment 
was known in 2020: 69% were recruited by 

a potential or current employer; 15% were 
recruited into trafficking by a member of 
their own family; and 5% by an intimate 
partner or marriage proposition.
Keeping an accurate tally on such 
statistics while also shining a light on the 
individual stories of survivors in recovery, 
Polaris dispels human trafficking myths and 
makes an impact on the lives of those who 
have been trafficked by harnessing data to 
reduce, prevent and end the practice while 
showing how the crime intersects in the 
worlds of business, finance, government 
and society. 
Beiser has been working with Jewish 
organizations across the country to raise 
awareness. He said that NCJW chapters 

across the country have been instrumental 
in aligning leaders in the Jewish community 
with anti-trafficking activists and other 
Jewish organizations such as the Religious 
Action Community to not only bring 
awareness and understanding to the general 
public, but also to enforce and strengthen 
the 2000 Trafficking Victims Protection 
Act, which makes trafficking a federal 
crime and provides resources and funding 
to aid survivors. 
“Trafficking survivors want to see many 
changes to our labor and immigration 
practices, and this requires a great deal of 
advocacy,
” Beiser said. “From my previous 
work in the Jewish community, I know that 
it’s not just adults who are getting 
involved, but there are efforts within 
Jewish youth groups and Jewish 
day schools to teach teens about the 
issue, who, in turn, want to teach 
their peers.
” 
Cindy Weintraub, co-chair 
for NCJW Michigan’s Human 
Trafficking Awareness committee, 
worked for years as a registered 
nurse specializing in the quality and 
safety of emergency 
room patient care at 
Beaumont Troy. In 
2014, she decided it 
would be beneficial 
if she and her staff 
enrolled in a one-hour 
training course to 
identify potential victims of human 
trafficking. 
“The course opened our eyes to 
the shocking fact that we had been treating 
and caring for human trafficking victims 
all along, but we didn’t realize it at the 
time,
” said Weintraub, who also sits on the 
Michigan Human Trafficking Task Force. 
“It was then I realized how big of a problem 
this is, right here in our own backyard. 
Those who are trafficked come from every 
socioeconomic and racial background. 
And, yes, it does happen right here in 
Oakland County.
” 

EDUCATING TEENS
Weintraub’s co-chair is Rita Sitron, who 
is working to bring human trafficking 
awareness and education into the public-
school arena. 
continued on page 12

Robert 
Beiser

Cindy 
Weintraub