The Pretty Lady

​I am Jewish, and I also maintain a devotional relationship with Santa Muerte. Yes, really.

My first encounter with Santa Muerte was not born of aesthetic fascination or rebellion. It began in the late 00s when I lived in Southern California, in a barrio with a large Mexican and Mexican-American population and Sureños. I was poor, disabled, and visibly vulnerable. A Mexican-American friend, seeing both the dangers of the neighborhood and my precarious position within it, advised me—very practically—to place a shrine to Santa Muerte on my front lawn. The reasoning was simple: she is known as a powerful protector of the marginalized, of those living on the edges, and of those who must coexist with danger. I did so, less as an act of theology than as an act of survival. And it worked. I was left alone. I was protected. I survived—and not only the neighborhood, but the process of escaping an abusive marriage during that same period of my life.

Years later, after that period of my life had long passed, Santa Muerte returned to me under very different circumstances. In February of 2021, I nearly died of COVID. During that illness, I experienced a vision of an angel of death who spared me. I do not present this as proof, nor do I ask anyone to share my interpretation—but the experience was real to me, vivid, and transformative.

In the aftermath of that near-death experience, I reached out again to Santa Muerte, not out of fear, but out of recognition. The path that unfolded afterward was one of sobriety, accountability, and a renewed commitment to getting right with Hashem.

This is the part that often confuses people: I do not experience my relationship with Santa Muerte as avoda zara (idolatry). I do not worship her as a god. I do not place her above G-d, alongside G-d, or in competition with G-d. My relationship with her is no different, in structure or intent, from prayer-work involving archangels—a practice with precedent in Jewish mystical and magical traditions, even if not universally embraced.

In fact, anecdotally and consistently, Santa Muerte has been known to instruct devotees not to worship her, but to direct their ultimate devotion to G-d. That alone places her outside the framework of idolatry as I understand it. If anything, her role is closer to that of an intercessor, a guardian, or a manifestation of a function already present in the cosmos.

It is for this reason that I understand Santa Muerte as potentially being a face of Azrael—the Angel of Death known in Jewish tradition. Death, after all, is not evil in Judaism. It is a necessary boundary, a messenger, and sometimes a mercy. Azrael is not a demon; Azrael is an agent of G-d, fulfilling a sacred and terrifying task with compassion when possible. To encounter death and live is not a contradiction of faith. It can be a deepening of it.

I am not asking Judaism to change for me, nor am I trying to universalize my experience. Jewish tradition has always contained multitudes—legal, mystical, poetic, philosophical. My path sits within that long and complicated history of Jews grappling with angels, intermediaries, visions, and the thin veil between worlds, especially in moments of crisis.

Santa Muerte did not pull me away from Judaism. She brought me back to life, and back to responsibility. She pointed me toward sobriety, toward humility, and toward Hashem. For me, that is not idolatry. That is relationship, discernment, and survival—hallmarks of Jewish spiritual life across millennia.

I do not expect everyone to understand this. I only ask that it be understood on its own terms, as the story of a disabled Jew who survived death, listened carefully to what spared him, and chose life.