On September 15, 2019, the first day of Latin Heritage Month, Dr. Analucía Lopezrevoredo founded Jewtina y Co., an organization for Latin Jews living in English-speaking North America. Lopezrevoredo is a Peruvian-Chilean-American Jewtina who is passionate about preserving Latin Jewish heritage and culture and honoring her lived experience as both Jewish and Latina. She founded Jewtina y Co. to provide a space for other Latin Jews to do the same.

Lopezrevoredo was born in Peru and is part of an interfaith family. The family left Peru because of terrorism and lived first in Spain and then in the United States. For nearly fifteen years, Lopezrevoredo was undocumented, leading her to advocate for immigration reform.

Growing up, Lopezrevoredo faced a number of pressures to assimilate. At age seven, she began going by the name “Ana” because so many of her classmates and teachers struggled to pronounce her name. Not until she was in college did a professor encourage her to see the beauty in her name and multicultural identity, and she began a journey of self-discovery.

Lopezrevoredo has a background in critical race and cross-cultural studies and a doctorate on Latino immigrant and refugee resiliency. She worked as a migrant rights advocate and organizer in California, Mexico, and Peru. Prior to founding Jewtina y Co., she worked at JIMENA, OneTable, Bend the Arc, and the Center to Advance Racial Equity in Portland, Oregon. A passionate lay leader, she is a board member of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, JPRO, and Urban Adamah and is a member of the Schusterman Foundation’s ROI community.

Lopezrevoredo founded Jewtina y Co. as a platform for Latin Jews to nurture Latin-Jewish community, identity, leadership, and resiliency. The “Co.” in the name stands for Jewtina y. Co’s five main values, each of which begins with the letters “co.” Co-munidad/Kehilla represents the value of inclusivity, co-nservación/kavod habriot preserving Latin Jewish heritage and culture, co-laboración/arevut the importance of examining inequities and working to free the Jewtina community of all forms of oppression, co-nocer/limmud providing opportunities for other communities to learn, and co-ntinuar/l’dor v’dor the importance of passing on traditions to the next generation.

Jewtina y Co. is a multifaceted organization, with a diverse program offering. Its PUENTES leadership and resiliency fellowship is a nine-month program for Latin Jewish changemakers that provides participants with culturally responsive leadership training that grounds them in both Jewish and Latin values and empowers them to make changes in their respective communities. It also offers local and national programming, international cohort experiences that close the gap between Latin Jews living in North America and Latin America, virtual Jewish learning, trilingual resources for every Jewish holiday, and a podcast called VOCES that elevates Latin Jewish stories from the community. The Jewtina y Co. website also contains a learning library that connects people to Latin Jewish recipes, books, and music.

Sources:

Lopezrevoredo, Analucía. “Celebrating Our Diverse Latin-Jewish Community.” Global Jews, April 20, 2021. https://globaljews.org/jewishand/celebrating-our-diverse-latin-jewish-community-2/.

Bolton-Fasman, Judy. “Jewtina y Co. Website Celebrates Latinx Jews.” Jewish Boston, October 5, 2020. https://www.jewishboston.com/read/jewtina-y-co-website-celebrates-latinx-jews/.

Kustanowitz, Esther. “Jewtina y Co aims to create a communal space Latin-Jewish identity in the US.” Jewish Insider, March 24, 2022. https://ejewishphilanthropy.com/jewtina-y-co-aims-to-create-a-communal-space-jewish-latin-identity-in-the-us/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=jewtina-y-co-aims-to-create-a-communal-space-jewish-latin-identity-in-the-us.

Jewtina y Co. Accessed June 13, 2022. https://jewtina.org/.

@jewtinayco. Instagram, accessed June 13, 2022. https://www.instagram.com/jewtinayco/?hl=en.