For Orthodox Jews on Long Island, no shave or a haircut for up to 7 weeks

Tens of thousands of Long Island's Orthodox Jews are forgoing haircuts for more than a month, pursuant to a rabbinical prohibition dating back centuries — and hastening a rush to the barbershop.

So barbers in Orthodox communities like Great Neck and the Five Towns have been very, very busy lately.

As happens annually in the run-up to Passover, a haircut has been difficult to come by over the past week.

Wait times are longer than almost any other time of the year, and the barbering business booms — before the start of a lull that lasts as long as 49 days, when the most observant of Jews don’t get haircuts, shave or listen to music.

Anything but average

“Average day, I do, like, 15 haircuts. When it’s holidays, I do 30, 35, 40, you know?” said Ephraim Amramov, owner and namesake of Efraim’s Barber Shop on Central Avenue in Cedarhurst. Amramov, an Orthodox Jew himself from Uzbekistan, estimates that 90% of his customers are Jewish. 

The prohibition on haircuts, shaving and listening to music is a tradition to mourn the deaths almost 2000 years ago of 24,000 disciples of the sage Rabbi Akiva between the holidays of Passover, which began Wednesday night, and the feast of Shavuot, according to Rabbi Moshe Elefant, the chief operating officer and executive rabbinical coordinator of the Orthodox Union’s kosher-food certification operation.

There are about 315,600 Jews on Long Island, regardless if observant, according to the UJA Federation of New York's most recently available report.

On Long Island, about 94,000 residents of Nassau and Suffolk counties are adherents of Judaism, including about 44,800 who are Orthodox, according to a 2020 analysis from the Association of Religion Data Archives, which counts adult members of congregations and their children, as well as others who regularly attend services.
Orthodox Jews — the most ritually strict — are the ones who typically observe the tradition of forgoing haircuts and shaving during the period known as the Omer.

But the practice is not restricted to that denomination, and some observers wait 33 days for a haircut, which is permitted on the holiday known as Lag b’Omer. Some wait the full 49 days.

Timing is everything

Following Jewish law while also keeping one’s hair in check can necessitate scheduling gamesmanship before Passover.

“This is also part of playing the game properly. You want to take the haircut as close to the holiday as possible, because you know that for the next seven weeks you can’t take a haircut," Elefant said. "So you want to make it the last possible moment, but you don’t want it the last, last moment, because you’re busy with other things, and you don’t know if he’ll have time for you."

Gavriel Morduhaev, who owns Estates Barber Shop in Franklin Square, said each year he notices a rush in haircut seekers — Orthodox Jews tend to have bigger-than-average families (“big families, thank God,” he said) — and each year he notices the drop-off, lasting weeks.
“We’re not gonna see them during the 49 days,” he said.

Columbia Law School student Nathan Samson, 23, of Cedarhurst, got his haircut Sunday at Amramov’s shop — a No. 3 on the hair clipper all around.
Samson says the tradition of forgoing haircuts and shaving is important to him to memorialize Akiva’s disciples as well as other Jews who have perished throughout the ages.
“That remembrance means a lot to me,” Samson said.

Ben Wallach, a 23-year-old accountant from Cedarhurst who’s been observing the haircut-forgoing tradition his entire life, likes to get his haircut a week before Passover to avoid the inevitable queue at the barbershop.

But this year, he didn’t need to get a haircut just before the holiday. He’d gotten a haircut a month earlier — around the holiday of Purim a month ago — and the barber cut Wallach’s hair shorter than usual.

“When I got the haircut,” Wallach said, “they almost cut me bald, so I didn’t need to get another one.”

By Matthew Chayes

matthew.chayes@newsday.comchayesmatthew

Matthew Chayes, a Newsday reporter since 2007, covers New York City.