Today I had the privilege of interviewing Gillian Mayer. Here is her story:
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I grew up in a Conservative Jewish household in Coney Island, NY. I
remember, very early, seeing flyers posted under the elevated train
lines that said Jews For Jesus and asking my mother what those meant.
She very sternly told me that those were not for us and we never
discussed it again.
We weren't particularly observant, but we were Jewish! Family gathered
for all holidays and there was some semblance of ritual, yet we never
attended Shul. I was given the choice of Hebrew lessons or music lessons
and the obvious choice for me was music. I didn't really know what
being a Bat Mitzvah meant, but it sounded boring and I was going to be a
musician.
My parents decided to move to Houston, TX, so off we went. Leaving our
extended family behind, we also left what little observance we still
enjoyed behind. We still had holiday dinners, but they weren't the same.
My father refused to join any of the synagogues here because he
believed that all they wanted was his money. I did manage to fall in
with a Jewish crowd and assumed that I would marry a Jewish man, but
when I met the man I was to marry, he wasn't Jewish.
We married and were okay until we had children. We had agreed that we
would teach them everything, but something in me changed. My children
were not setting foot in a church. Through a friend, we learned about a
congregation where Jewish people and gentile people worshipped together.
I agreed to go.
At first, I thought these people were all nuts. There was a band and
dancing, but G-d knew what he was doing. I was being drawn in by the
music. I found myself singing along, but when we came to "that word" I
would skip it. I started reading my husband's bible and thought they
were nice stories. That changed to I suppose this could be true and
finally to how could this not be true. I was thirty years old when I
realized that this Name that I had seen on a flyer as a child was, in
fact, for me.
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You'll also enjoy the music of Corry Bell & Lev Shelo, Nate Benjamin, Ted Pearce, Debbie Chernoff, Jonathan Settel and the Schleps!
