At six years old, I knew my mother’s idols were powerless

As told to Tziyona Kantrowitz by Malka Shifra

Malka Shifra (née Sonia) grew up in a home in Los Angeles that was filled with idols and animal sacrifices. Even as a small child, she was a truth-seeker, challenging her mother’s gods. As an adult, Malka Shifra pursued other religions in her search for Hashem, each time ending up disappointed. Until, at last, she finally found Him

Chapter 1

When I challenged my mother’s gods, I was a child, like Avraham Avinu.

My childhood home in Los Angeles was packed with idols in every direction. Each had a different name and attribute. Each “demanded” various things from their believers. And my mother was a believer.

She devoted all her love and time to her gods. She would dress the idols in hand-stitched garments, give them cigars to “smoke,” and splatter the idols' pots, which they stood on, with blood from animal sacrifices. She filled the pots with the gods’ “needs”: feathers, stones, wood, bones, and more. Every day, she lovingly laid out food in front of the statues.

The house would stink from the cigar smoke, the blood, and the rotting meat, vegetables, and even cake that she eventually threw away after a few days. Even as a six-year-old, I could not understand. Why did she feed the idols? What power could they possibly have if they couldn’t even eat their food?

MY parents were born and raised in Cuba but escaped during the Cuban Revolution in 1959, arriving in America as political refugees. I was born in 1967 and given my name, Sonia, by my father. It isn’t a Cuban name at all. It means wise. Maybe he had a hunch about my future life.

My parents loved the freedom of America and expected their four children to realize how fortunate we were to be born Americans. Yet my parents never even considered integrating into America’s white culture. The American way of life stopped outside our doors. We spoke only Spanish in the house, even though we kids all spoke English fluently in school. My mother didn’t care or want to know about our neighbors’ or classmates’ cultures. All that mattered was our Latino Santerian community.

Like most Cubans, my parents were followers of the pagan religion Santeria (see sidebar). Our community held frequent events, almost weekly. The most extravagant of these were “initiations,” a ceremony where a person was accepted to be a believer as a priest to one of the gods. There would be dancing, cigar smoking, liquor passed around, songs from Africa, and lots of meat. Almost 100 animals — rams, goats, sheep, cows, all sorts of fowl — would be slaughtered as a ritual for the bigger events.

Every year, my mother hosted a party for her birthday. She threw herself into a fervor, spending many days preparing the food for the guests and the idols.

On the day of the party, my mother took all her favorite idols into the living room as the main attraction. Her favorite idol was a black wooden man fiercely holding two swords above his head. Next to him was a seven-foot statue with his two dogs.

I gazed up at them, wondering how these inanimate objects could consume so much of my mother’s attention. Since the age of six, I had doubted the power of my mother’s gods. But today, at the age of ten, I would openly challenge them — and be punished severely for doing so.