Sandy Feliciano is looking forward to Tuesday night.

For the first time since the pandemic began, she and other members of the Hispanic Young Professionals & Entrepreneurs group will play lotería in person, rather than on Zoom.

To mark the occasion, and to close out Hispanic Heritage Month, HYPE, which is a division of the Georgia Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, has partnered with the Atlanta branch of the American Jewish Committee’s Access group to celebrate the intersectionality of Hispanic and Jewish/Sephardic cultures by playing the bingo-like game.

“It’s a really cool way of connecting both of our young professionals groups over a game,” said Feliciano, the marketing and communications chair for HYPE.

Lotería is similar to bingo, but instead of letters and numbers being called out, players wait for cards with images to be pulled from a deck. Players then try to match the pictures that are called from the deck to the ones on their game card.

Although some classic lotería cards will be used during the game, Feliciano said others will have Jewish/Sephardic, millennial and Atlanta themes. For example, one card says “el panjalá,” or challah bread, and another depicts “el Beltline,” a nod to the popular Atlanta outdoor space.

Credit: Submitted by: HYPE

Credit: Submitted by: HYPE

“I think it’s a wonderful idea to show the intersectionality of Jewish and Hispanic cultures, especially as I am a Jew from Brazil,” said Melissa Harari, who sits on the American Jewish Committee’s steering committee board.

Harari said she hopes people who attend will be able to see the allyship that exists between the two communities.

A speaker from the Israeli Ministry of Tourism is also expected to talk about Judaism and its links to the Hispanic community during the game night, and there will be food served that’ll represent both cultures.

“We want to make this an event that we can do yearly,” said Daniella Gutierrez, the community and events chair for HYPE.

Gutierrez believes the event will help make the “Jewish and Latino/Hispanic community intersection” more accessible.

If you go

The game night starts at 6:30 p.m. Oct. 12 at Orpheus Brewing Company, 1440 Dutch Valley Place NE, Atlanta. Tickets can be purchased for $10.

Paradise Afshar is a Report for America corps member covering metro Atlanta’s immigrant communities. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Report for America are partnering to raise funds to place multilingual journalists on the staff in The AJC newsroom to improve our coverage of these communities. We hope you’ll help us by donating to this initiative.