A fundraising effort in honor of – and then, in memory of – an 8-year-old Jewish boy with leukemia recently passed the $1 million mark.
The St. Baldrick’s Foundation, a California charity that raises money for cures for childhood cancers, announced that the “36 Rabbis Shave for the Brave” campaign, which began with 36 rabbis shaving their heads in support of Samuel Asher Sommer of Chicago, has grown to more than 70 men and women, and raised $1 million. The drive’s original goal was $180,000.
Sommer, nicknamed “Superman Sam” for his love of superheroes, succumbed to acute myeloid leukemia in December, 2013, 18 months after his diagnosis.
His parents are Phyllis and Michael Sommer, both rabbis.
Rabbi Phyllis Sommer and a colleague, Rabbi Rebecca Schorr, had proposed a rabbinical shave-a-thon to bring funds to childhood cancer research two week’s after Sam’s diagnosis.
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