“Over the last 18 years, I’ve undergone this amazing journey in spiritualism,” Nimrod-Avraham May, a former Disney executive, marketing veteran and entrepreneur, tells ISRAEL21c.
Almost 18 years ago, he survived a fire that engulfed a building he was staying in. “I inhaled a lot of smoke, but I am still here so it ended well. With that said, it sparked and spawned me onto asking myself questions I never dared to ask,” he says.
Among many transformative experiences that May has undergone since then, one was pouring all his energy and effort into a special project that had sat “in the drawer” for nearly 20 years.
“I would take it out at least a few times a year, but then put it back in,” May tells ISRAEL21c.
‘God’s Gang’
That project was the animated adventure series “God’s Gang,” which mixes action and humor with deeper themes of faith, trust, resilience, compassion and cooperation.
“It’s a special spiritual sauce, with an underlying message promoting what we believe are the right values to create a thriving humanity,” adds May.
The show focuses on a group of four interfaith superheroes:
- Sumuslim, a Muslim who utilizes sumo for fights, and has a superpower called “hypno-storytelling.”
- TaekWonHindu, a girl who fights with taekwondo, uses telepathy on animals and multiplies her arms like a Hindu god.
- Ninjew, a Jewish boy with a laser vision and “Kabbalah invisibility powder.”
- Chris Cross, a Southern Baptist preacher who knows karate and can detect any object thrown at him.
May pitched the idea to Disney back in 2006. “I offered to take the Power Rangers, which was one of their most successful IPs, and turn it into a group of interfaith heroes,” he says.
“But luckily for me, Disney didn’t do it.”
Fast forward to 2023, and the first episode of “God’s Gang” finally premiered on YouTube following years of development. To date, that episode has generated over 4.6 million views.
The fruit of a lot of labor
God’s Gang — also the name of May’s production company producing the show — has released its third episode, with many more in the pipeline.
Each one is intricately crafted and takes a long time to produce. “It is the fruit of the labor of a very talented team of professionals,” notes May.
The show’s head writer is Rob Kutner, an Emmy-winning comedy writer who has written for “The Daily Show,” “The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien” and many others. Kutner recently released his comedy book on Judaism, “The Jews: 5000 Years and Counting.”
The rest of the creative team behind the show includes professionals from Netflix, Sony Pictures, Dreamworks and others.
God’s Gang also employs an interfaith council that includes “imams, rabbis, pastors, Hindu specialists, Buddhist disciples and a Kabbalah advisor.”
“We are representing different beliefs, and we don’t want to touch any kind of sensitive topics that we are not familiar with enough. They’re helping us overcome different aspects of how [different religions] are presented and how they interact together.”
The team that works on the show is spread over 15 countries, including an animation studio in Indonesia. “We had 67 Muslim animators working on the first episode,” adds May.
God’s Gang also makes the point of employing neurodivergent voice actors, including Atticus Baldwin, the nephew of actor Alec Baldwin.
Although May raised capital to kickstart the project, it has been largely self-funded. He is now looking for partners and investors to expand the God’s Gang universe.
“We want to follow other smart IPs’ steps; create weekly episodes, develop a mobile game, build ways to give people the right mindset and the right tools to practice what God is practicing,” he adds.
A long road to God
May, 52, grew up in a “secular and atheist” home in Israel.
“My father was a Holocaust survivor and my mother was an orphan. So, for them there was no God because life was somewhat cruel to them,” he explains.
He admits that when he first came up with the idea for “God’s Gang” he was “not very spiritual,” and simply thought “maybe I’ll make a lot of money.”
But the singular event of surviving the fire “awakened me and made me go search for God; for answers about the universe, the existence, our nature.”
He spent the next few years living a double life of sorts.
“In the world of matter, in the Matrix, I was still pursuing strategies, launching companies, fundraising and investing; but on the other hand, I was trying to figure life out.”
Eventually, May wanted to find a way to pass on everything he had learned in his spiritual quest, deciding it was time to make “God’s Gang” his exclusive focus.
The message he is trying to convey through the show is what he would say to an atheist in a hypothetical conversation about the nature of God and spirituality.
“An atheist would probably not be very open to listen to my story, but I’m a professional marketer,” he laughs. “I’d try to explain to an atheist what God is in two words.”
May asks me what the two words are, and when I hesitate, he tells me: “one love.”
“One refers to the big bang, the quantum entanglement. Everything is quantumly interconnected; we are connected, everything is one. And love is the most Noble Energy that we ever experience.”
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