Picture this: A Shabbat dinner in an art gallery, kippahs in every rainbow color, a large buffet atop a tablecloth that is a recycled banner from the Paris Radical Pride’s Jewish parade. Welcome to Radical Mitzva, a Judeo-queer space in Paris that bridges the gap between queer, Jewish lefties in search of an inclusive community. It’s not just Shabbats or holiday meet-ups, either. Radical Mitzva brings together all the artsy and intellectual goodness you’d expect, year-round: screenings of Jewish movies, kippah embroidery workshops and even an upcoming book club!
Born of the brilliant mind of Alexia Levy-Chekroun, a member of the feminist, anti-racist, anti capitalist and decolonial collective Oraaj, Radical Mitzva began as a WhatsApp group before migrating to IRL moments in both underground Parisian venues and in each other’s living rooms. “Radical Mitzva is about decolonizing knowledge and challenging the erasure of certain ways of life, specifically those pre-Moses Mendelssohn, where Judaism was more a social, political and communal project centered on texts,” Levy-Chekroun said. “As left-wing Jews, we want to re-engage with these texts and traditions, draw inspiration from them and re-politicize them. This is part of a broader vision of intercommunal, diasporic and decolonial thinking.” The goal of Radical Mitzva is to make a space for Jews from all walks of life, to recreate a Jewish cocoon for all those who might have lost it, never known it or wanted to rebuild it. A place where everyone can feel, celebrate, pray and find their new besties amidst challahs and nigguns. If that sounds like your perfect chosen mishpacha, welcome to the club.
From the very first exchanges on WhatsApp, everyone’s self-introductions hinted at a plurality of links to Jewish identity. Ashkenazim, Sepharadim, Thessaloniki Jews, Jews from Alsace… a mosaic of the Jewish Diaspora emerged. Radical Mitzva attracted so many different versions of Judaism, from the Orthodox-ish to the deeply secular, from those who had grown up in the Jewish tradition to those who had discovered their origins late in life. The common thread? A proudly queer ethos.
Rachel Pelta-Tournay, a member of the group, summed up why Radical Mitzva matters so much to her like this: “I didn’t grow up with any religious education. I simply knew that we were Jewish: My grandmother was the daughter of a rabbi in Morocco, and my grandfather came from a family of deportees. Reconnecting with my Jewish identity happened little by little — traveling to Israel, facing antisemitism in relationships — but Oct. 7 was a wake-up call,” she said. “Radical Mitzva saved me when I felt incredibly alone. I’ve met a lot of people who I think were also lonely.” Since joining Radical Mitzva, Rachel has been inspired to start her own radical Jewish community close to her home. She co-founded a space called Ani veat-a in the south of France, to reconnect left-wing Jews to moments of conviviality and spirituality.
Yaël Ohayon, a DJ who grew up in a small town and a religious Sephardic community in 1980s France, found the friction between her trans identity and Jewish identity isolating. About finding community in Radical Mitzva, she shares: “It’s a game changer to have a Shabbat meal without being misgendered.” The half-virtual, half-IRL community has enabled Yaël to approach other areas of her daily life in a different way, too. “At Radical Mitzva, being surrounded by people who truly get me gave me a huge boost in confidence and self-esteem. I stopped feeling like the isolated freak — too queer for Jewish spaces, too Jewish for queer ones — especially after Oct. 7…”
This queer-Jewish combination was just what the French-Jewish community needed. Why do we have to pick one identity over another? How many people have grown up with a daily life punctuated by synagogue and the Jewish calendar, and who, because of their gender, sexuality and/or feminist identities, no longer feel safe, or have even been outright ejected from these spaces? If so, Radical Mitzva is the right door to knock on. Baya, another member of the collective, put it this way: “Radical Mitzva seeks precisely to reconcile these two aspects of our lives, to affirm that faith and our texts can be the source of our support for feminist, anti-racist, anti-colonialist thoughts.”
This counter-mode of existence reclaims community as the pillar of Jewish life, while incorporating the plural identities of each individual. Levy-Chekroun, the founder, said: “For us, Jewish emancipation comes from challenging the way modernity conceives social links, and doing so from the texts and tradition.”
“Radical Mitzva is refreshingly inclusive,” Baya agreed. “There’s no pre-selection, unlike other collectives, which makes the group incredibly diverse. The people I’ve met through the collective are enthusiastic about it, and we feel there’s a real need for spaces like those created by Radical Mitzva, where we can openly talk about our identities and positions, in contrast to many more traditional religious communities where talking ‘politics’ is discouraged.”
How sustainable is this gorgeous dreamscape in the long run? Building a decolonial, anti-capitalist space isn’t easy when you’re fighting both antisemitism and queerphobia. The WhatsApp group is still going strong, and the IRL events help create bonds and trust beyond just the text messages. Multiple members speak with fondness and respect about the fiery debates that occur amongst the group (yes, often in the WhatsApp group, but sometimes in person, too). “The criteria that bring us together — Jews, queers, leftists — are broad [identities], which sometimes leads to disagreements, particularly [when it comes to Israel/Palestine],” Baya said. “It can be frustrating, but this plurality also makes me feel less isolated than in traditional communities.”
Yaël feels the same, and admits she has even found space to change her own mind about some questions. “Israel and Zionism have provoked the most debate in the group, no doubt,” she said. “But instead of seeing it as a challenge, I took it as a chance to ‘think against myself.’ It pushed me to re-examine my claimed Zionism and begin to reconcile it with a decolonial perspective, something I had thought impossible.”
Radical Mitzva offers membership to all who want to participate, and offers the chance for its members to experience a real kaleidoscope of Jewish and queer identities, breaking down walls and building new worlds. I’m so grateful for its existence, because to me, that’s what being Jewish and queer is all about.
