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How this Jewish refugee became Times Square’s queen of porn
(New York Jewish Week) — “She was the most un-grandma person that anyone could have,” says David Bourla at the beginning of a film about his one-of-a-kind grandmother, Chelly Wilson. “Except for the fact that she was Jewish, we celebrated Christmas in a porn theater. It doesn’t get any weirder than that.”
So begins Valerie Kontakos’ documentary, “Queen of the Deuce,” which tells the unlikely story of how a tough-as-nails Jewish lesbian narrowly escaped the Holocaust in Greece and became the successful owner of several pornographic movie theaters in New York City in the the 1970s. The documentary, which premieres in New York on Friday, Nov. 11, is one of several Jewish films playing the documentary film festival DOC NYC, which runs this year from Nov. 9 through Nov. 27.
Born in 1908, Wilson grew up in a religious Sephardic family in Thessaloniki — also known as Salonika in Judeo-Spanish — and was ambitious from a young age. “She had this fierce desire to achieve something,” said Kontakos. “When she was younger, she wanted to be a doctor. But of course that wasn’t an option for her at that point, and given her circumstances, given the fact that she was a Jewish Sephardic woman in Salonika. She came from a very conservative community.”
Relying on a mix of archival footage, interviews and animated sequences, “Queen of the Deuce” is a wide-ranging look at Wilson’s improbable life: her various business ventures, her marriages to men and romances with women, the pain of the loss of her family and more. Central to the film are Wilson’s now-grown grandchildren, who describe their unconventional Jewish grandmother as tough and eccentric, with the confident body language of a mob boss. (Wilson, who died in 1994, appears in the film through home videos.)
As a young woman, Wilson left Athens just before the outbreak of World War II, narrowly escaping the devastating destruction of Thessaloniki’s Jewish community. According to Yad Vashem, out of the approximate 56,000 Jews who lived in Thessaloniki before the war, some 54,000 were killed in the Holocaust.
Wilson got her start in New York selling hot dogs and soda. She sent some of her earnings to Greece to buy newsreel footage and turned the footage into a film called “Greece on the March” — an effort to raise money in the U.S. for the Greek war effort against the Germans. When she played the film at a New York movie theater she met a Jewish film projectionist named Rex Wilson. Although they lacked a common language, he became her second husband.
“He was nice,” Wilson says of Rex in her husky, accented voice. “He provided me with cigarettes.”
(Her first husband, whom she divorced after having two children, Paulette and Dino, was the product of an arranged marriage in Greece. Wilson compares his kisses to “torture” in the film. Later in her life, after Wilson and her second husband split up, her preference for women became an open secret.)
From there, Wilson fell into the movie theater business — first “regular” movies, and then, by the late 1960s, sensing opportunity, she became the owner of several adult movie theaters. Many of them were located on 42nd Street, nicknamed “the Deuce,” which was New York’s infamously gritty red light district at the time.
“It’s unusual not to be surprised by something that she did,” said Kontakos, who first met Wilson in the early 1970s when, as a teenager, she worked at the Wilsons’ Tivoli Theatre on 8th Avenue. “It showed Greek films on Sundays, which were PG, completely family material. The rest of the week they would show porn.”
“Times Square [in the ‘70s] was like the underworld,” added Kontakos, whose family is Greek though not Jewish. “You had drugs there, prostitution, and then you had porn. It was really quite extreme.”
The Adonis Theater marquee, as seen in “Queen of the Deuce.” (Courtesy of the Wilson family)
Wilson was, by all accounts, an exceptionally tough character — she rarely smiled, and usually had a cigarette or a cigar in hand. She frequently held court reclining on the sofa of her living room — her Times Square apartment was above the Eros, a gay porn theater that opened in 1962 — with bags of cash in the corner. Wilson also owned the Adonis, an all-male adult theater so legendary for cruising that it became the locale for a meta, well-known 1978 gay porno film “A Night at the Adonis.”
In family footage shown in the film, she puffs a cigarette and tells stories in imperfect, Greek-accented English of how she smuggled her children to New York from Palestine and Greece. “I had Dino stolen from Israel, you know?” she says, reclining on her couch in a red silk robe. The story that unfolds is an improbable one, involving secret boat rides, misbehaving children and a chance encounter with a sympathetic official in Athens.
Similar to the fate of Thessaloniki’s Jews, most of Wilson’s family died in the Holocaust. But her shrewdness had saved Paulette: Before she departed for the United States in 1939, Wilson left her daughter in the care of a non-Jewish Greek family — with the specific instructions not to turn her over to her Jewish relatives, even if they came looking for her (which, of course, they did).
Still, Wilson kept her difficult past mostly hidden from her children and grandchildren. And in the film’s interviews, her offspring express the pain of their lost family and histories. They remember that Wilson refused to seek out reparations for her murdered family, saying it was blood money.
For Kontakos, it was important to tell this Holocaust story well, noting that the history the persecution of Greek Jews isn’t as well known as other European Jews. “I do feel it’s still not really discussed as openly as it should be,” she said.
Though Wilson may not have been the warm, nurturing type, she had a fierce dedication to her family, and her children and grandchildren reminisce in the film about her creative spirit and zest for life. Kontakos hopes audiences walk away from the film with a sense of “the joy of life, regardless of the hardships,” she said.
“Queen of the Deuce” is screening in New York on Friday, Nov. 11 and Saturday, Nov. 12 as part of the DOC NYC film festival, and will be available for online streaming Nov. 12 through Nov. 27. For details, click here.
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The post How this Jewish refugee became Times Square’s queen of porn appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Israel Announces Departure From Several UN Agencies It Accuses of Bias Against Jewish State
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres speaks at the UN headquarters in New York City, US, before a meeting about the conflict in Gaza, Nov. 6, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Caitlin Ochs
Israel will immediately sever ties with several United Nations agencies and international organizations, the Foreign Ministry announced on Tuesday, accusing the bodies of exhibiting systemic bias against the Jewish state within the UN system.
In a statement posted on social media, the foreign ministry said that the decision was made following an internal examination after the United States last week withdrew from dozens of international bodies which, according to the White House, “no longer serve American interests.”
The move was approved by Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar, who instructed officials to conduct a broader review to determine whether Israel should continue cooperating with additional international organizations, potentially leading to further shakeups.
The seven organizations that Israel will remove itself from right away are: the Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children in Armed Conflict, UN Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UNWOMEN), UN Conference for Trade and Development, (UNCTAD), UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA), UN Alliance of Civilizations, UN Energy, and Global Forum on Migration and Development.
The foreign ministry argued that each body targeted Israel unfairly.
After an examination and discussion conducted following the US withdrawal from dozens of international organizations, Israel’s Minister of Foreign Affairs @gidonsaar has decided that Israel will immediately sever all contact with the following UN agencies and international…
— Israel Foreign Ministry (@IsraelMFA) January 13, 2026
Israeli officials said the decision to sever ties with these specific organizations was the result of a broader conclusion that parts of the UN system have been politicized and openly hostile to Israel. According to the foreign ministry, several of the bodies either singled out Israel for disproportionate condemnation, ignored or minimized Israeli civilian suffering, produced one-sided and ideologically driven reports, or provided platforms for critics while excluding Israeli participation altogether.
Other organizations were accused of undermining core principles of state sovereignty or exemplifying an unaccountable and inefficient UN bureaucracy. Collectively, the ministry argued, this repeated behavior led Israel with little justification for continued engagement and necessitated a reassessment of participation in forums it believes no longer operate in good faith.
Israeli officials framed the move as both corrective and overdue, arguing that a number of UN-affiliated bodies have abandoned neutrality and instead become platforms for political attacks against the Jewish state.
Several of the organizations cited in the US withdrawal announcement had already been cut off by Israel in recent years.
Israel ended cooperation with UN Women in July 2024, after the agency declined to address or investigate sexual violence committed against Israeli women during Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel. The foreign ministry said the organization’s silence on the issue was unacceptable, adding that the former local head of UN Women concluded her tenure at Israel’s request.
Officials signaled that additional organizations could face similar decisions as Israel reevaluates the costs of participation in international forums it believes have become politicized.
The move comes on the heels of the US removing itself from 66 international organizations which, the Trump administration argued, behave “contrary to US national interests, security, economic prosperity, or sovereignty” and promote “ideological programs that conflict with US sovereignty and economic strength.”
“These withdrawals will end American taxpayer funding and involvement in entities that advance globalist agendas over US priorities, or that address important issues inefficiently or ineffectively such that US taxpayer dollars are best allocated in other ways to support the relevant missions,” the White House said in a Jan. 7 statement.
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Anti-Israel Activists Drop Lawsuit to Cancel Antisemitism Prevention Course at Northwestern University
People walk on the campus of Northwestern University, a day after a US official said $790 million in federal funding has been frozen for the university while it investigates the school over civil rights violations, in Evanston, Illinois, US, April 9, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Vincent Alban
A civil lawsuit which aimed to cancel Northwestern University’s antisemitism prevention course on the apparent grounds that conduct widely acknowledged as antisemitic is integral to Palestinian culture has been voluntarily withdrawn by both parties.
“The plaintiffs and defendants, by and through their respective undersigned counsel, hereby submit the following joint stipulation of voluntary dismissal purgation to federal rule of civil procedure … and hereby stipulate to the dismissal of this action in its entirety, without prejudice,” says a court document filed on Dec. 22. “Each party shall bear its own attorneys’ fees and costs.”
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) — an organization that has been scrutinized by US authorities over alleged ties to the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas — demanded a temporary restraining order to halt the program, which the university mandated as a prerequisite for fall registration, and the rescission of disciplinary measures imposed on nine students who refused to complete it. Filing on behalf of the Northwestern Graduate Workers for Palestine (GW4P) group CAIR charged that the required training violates Title VI of the US Civil Rights Act of 1964 and serves as a “pretense” for censoring “expressions of Palestinian identity, culture, and advocacy for self-determination.”
CAIR particularly took issue with Northwestern’s adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition of antisemitism and its application to the training course, which, at its conclusion, calls on students to pledge not to be antisemitic.
Used by governments and other entities across the world, the IHRA definition describes antisemitism as a “certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.” It provides 11 specific, contemporary examples of antisemitism in public life, the media, schools, the workplace, and in the religious sphere.
Beyond classic antisemitic behavior associated with the likes of the medieval period and Nazi Germany, the examples include denial of the Holocaust and newer forms of antisemitism targeting Israel such as demonizing the Jewish state, denying its right to exist, and holding it to standards not expected of any other democratic state.
The mutual dismissal did not cite a reason for the claim’s withdrawal, but it was Northwestern’s robust policy agenda for combating antisemitism which precipitated CAIR’s scrutiny.
The university adopted the IHRA definition of antisemitism in 2025 and began holding the “mandatory antisemitism training” sessions CAIR challenged in its lawsuit.
“This included a live training for all new students in September and a 17-minute training module for all enrolled students, produced in collaboration with the Jewish United Fund,” Northwestern said in a report which updated the public on its antisemitism prevention efforts. “Antisemitism trainings will continue as a permanent part of our broader training in civil rights and Title IX.”
Other initiatives rolled out by the university include an Advisory Council to the President on Jewish Life, dinners for Jewish students hosted by administrative officials, and educational events which raise awareness of rising antisemitism in the US and around the world.
On Tuesday, the Coalition Against Antisemitism at Northwestern (CAAN) told The Algemeiner that the lawsuit lacked a “strong legal foundation” and was “an inefficient use of judicial resources.”
It added, “Universities have broad discretion to require training programs designed to address antisemitism and other issues central to campus safety and wellbeing. While the case was withdrawn prior to a ruling on the merits, we believe the university’s authority in this area is well-established.”
In late November, Northwestern University agreed to pay $75 million and abolish a controversial compact, known as the “Deering Meadow Agreement,” it reached with a pro-Hamas student group in exchange for the US federal government’s releasing $790 million in grants it impounded in April over accusations that it was slow to address antisemitism and other policies which allowed reverse discrimination.
Part of the “Deering Meadow Agreement” which ended an anti-Israel encampment, called for establishing a scholarship for Palestinian undergraduates, contacting potential employers of students who caused recent campus disruptions to insist on their being hired, creating a segregated dormitory hall to be occupied exclusively by students of Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) and Muslim descent, and forming a new advisory committee in which anti-Zionists students and faculty may wield an outsized voice.
The agreement outraged Jewish civil rights groups and lawmakers and ultimately led to the resignation of former Northwestern University president Michael Schill, who authorized the concessions.
“As part of this agreement with the federal government, the university has terminated the Deering Meadow Agreement and will reverse all policies that have been implemented or are being implemented in adherence to it,” the university said in a statement, noting that it also halted plans for the segregated dormitory. “The university remains committed to fostering inclusive spaces and will continue to support student belonging and engagement through existing campus facilities and organizations, while partnering with alumni to explore off-campus, privately owned locations that could further support community connection and programming.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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For 250 years, American Jews have answered prejudice with defiance
(JTA) — In December 1778, as the American Revolution still raged, a Jewish writer in Charlestown opened a newspaper and saw Jews made into wartime scapegoats. An article in the local press claimed that Jews in Georgia had taken “every advantage in trade,” then fled with “ill-got wealth” as soon as the state was “attacked by an enemy,” “turning their backs upon the country when in danger.”
The writer did not let this accusation go unanswered. He responded in print. And he signed his reply with a line that declared both his patriotism and his devotion to Judaism: “A real AMERICAN, and True hearted ISRAELITE.”
That combination — civic belonging and Jewish identity claimed in the same breath — feels newly resonant as the United States enters its 250th anniversary year. The American story has never been free of antisemitism. But this early source reveals something else that is often overlooked: From the country’s earliest years, Jews in the United States could answer public insinuations in newspapers, using the civic vocabulary of their time, as participants in the public square.
The 1778 letter is striking not only for its tone but for its immediacy. The author refutes the rumor with a blunt factual claim: “there is not, at this present hour, a single Georgia Israelite in Charlestown.” The people the earlier writer thought he had identified “upon inspection of their faces,” he suggests, were women “with their dear babes,” fleeing danger as countless families did in wartime.
Then he turns the accusation on its head. Far from abandoning Georgia, he writes, Jewish merchants from the state had been in Charlestown on “Sunday the 22d” [sic] of the previous month and when they learned of an enemy landing, “they instantly left this… and proceeded post haste to Georgia, leaving all their concerns unsettled.” They are now, he insists, “with their brother citizens in the field, doing that which every honest American should do.”
The accusation did not end with the Revolution. In the next century, amid another national crisis, it returned in a different form — and again drew a public reply.
A second text, published 85 years later during the Civil War, records antisemitism appearing again. On May 22, 1863, the Natchez Daily Courier published an extract from a sermon preached at the German Hebrew Synagogue in Richmond on a fast day “recommended by the President.” The rabbi, M. J. Michelbacher, addressed what he called the “cry” heard in public life: “that the Israelite does not fight in the battles of his country.”
The sermon does what the Charlestown letter did. It names the accusation plainly, then insists that it is false. “All history attests the untruthfulness of this ungracious charge,” the rabbi declares. He speaks of Jewish soldiers who have been “crippled for life, or slain upon the field of battle,” and of “several thousand” still in the war’s campaigns.
Then he turns to another longstanding claim — one that recalled the 1778 rumor about “ill-got wealth.” “There is another cry heard,” he says, “and it was even repeated in the Hall of Congress, that the Israelite is oppressing the people — that he is engaged in the great sin of speculating and extorting in the bread and meat of the land.”
The rabbi reports having made “due inquiry” from the Potomac to the Rio Grande and concludes: “the Israelites are not speculators nor extortioners.” He argues that Jewish merchants do not hoard a staple “to enhance its value,” and he appeals to the plain logic of commerce: “It is obvious to the most obtuse mind that the high prices of the Israelite would drive all his customers into the stores of his Christian neighbors.”
Taken together, the 1778 letter and the 1863 sermon extract show two strands present early in the American record: antisemitism, and the ability to answer it in print. That right did not erase prejudice or guarantee safety. But it did give American Jews an early civic tool of belonging —something many European Jews could not take for granted.
The same paper record that preserves these rebuttals also holds another inheritance: early scenes of Jewish belonging, especially at synagogue dedications and cornerstone layings, when non-Jewish neighbors and civic leaders chose to show up.
In Charleston, one of the nation’s earliest centers of Jewish life, Temple Beth Elohim rebuilt after a devastating fire in 1838. When the new synagogue was dedicated in March 1841, notices extended an invitation beyond the Jewish community. “Clergy of all denominations,” “His Excellency the Governor,” judges, other elected officials, the Mayor and Aldermen of Charleston, and “the public generally” were all “respectfully invited to attend.”
The notice shows the dedication as a civic occasion, not a private rite.
A similar pattern appears in Mobile. In 1858, after a fire left the Jewish community without its synagogue, a report in The Israelite spoke with gratitude of “Christian brethren” who “had generously and liberally contributed towards erecting a most beautiful and substantial edifice.” The same theme surfaces again and again in early reports of synagogue building across the United States.
That is why these sources matter in a 250th anniversary year: The paper record preserves both early prejudice and early practices of public belonging, and provides a template for what Jews can anticipate in the face of attacks, like last week’s arson at a synagogue in Jackson, Mississippi.
That double inheritance still shapes American Jewish life: welcome and violence, belonging and suspicion. The balance is never guaranteed. Pluralism has to be chosen again and again.
In the 1778 letter, the writer does not ask for pity. He asks for fair judgment. “Let judgment take place,” the earlier author had written, after describing Jews fleeing Georgia. The rebuttal responds with evidence and with a claim about the obligations of citizenship: Georgia’s Jewish merchants, he insists, are “with their brother citizens in the field.”
In 1863, M.J. Michelbacher did not pretend that the accusations were harmless. He calls them “ungracious” and rooted in prejudice.
As the United States marks 250 years, there will be no shortage of speeches about what it means to be an American. Newspaper archives offer one reminder: pluralism has always depended on choices made in public life — by editors who amplify slander or correct it, by neighbors who show up to moments of celebration across lines of faith, and by those who helped build places of worship not their own.
Belonging has never been guaranteed; it has been defended. The Charlestown “true hearted Israelite” offers an enduring lesson for the 250th: when prejudice is spoken, and you have the power to answer, you answer
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of JTA or its parent company, 70 Faces Media.
The post For 250 years, American Jews have answered prejudice with defiance appeared first on The Forward.