Dudes Shaving Dudes: Closing Thoughts On The Omerathon

On Sunday Jewcy.com and East Side Jews celebrated Lag B’Omer. It’s a pretty obscure holiday, that most people have never heard of. It’s not like you’ll be on Hollywood Boulevard and hear, “Oh how’d you spend Lag B’Omer? It’s my favorite holiday.” Well maybe you would hear that on La Brea and Beverly, but if you’ve never heard about Lag B’Omer it’s all about joy. In a period of mourning it’s the breath of fresh air, the “Adult Swim” to the Omer pool party. So if you celebrated it like we did at our Massive B’Omer bash in Echo Park, it may well have become your new favorite Jewish holiday.

After 33 days of counting the Omer, we celebrated with a bonfire, music, and hair removal! Yes, for those growing beards or not cutting their hair during the Omer like myself it’s acceptable to trim/cut your beard on this day (I didn’t cut my beard because I’m going the full 49, as any excuse to have a beard is good enough for me!). So we held a joyous party that was an homage to Hair. From playing songs to telling funny stories about our experiences with hair. We even trimmed a few beards at our shave station, as for some of the participants in The Omerathon, this was the end of their beard growing fundraising journey.

With their beads and those still growing so far we have raised over $2500 for Jewish Family Service of Los Angeles and their hunger prevention programs.  For a holiday all about joy there was much to be joyous about. In the first year of this project, we couldn’t be more thrilled with our fundraising success. We set goals and met them. Grew beards, some for the first time, and charted our progress as we set out to achieve a goal. I’ve always said that I could never run a marathon, because I’m the kid that ran an 11 minute mile, but I think that after this experience it’s time to set a new goal and if we can help raise over $2500 for hunger prevention by growing our beards, then we can pretty much do anything.