Shatters Guinness Book of Records Mark
NEW YORK, Aug. 6 /PRNewswire/ — A “Kosher Koncoction” unlike anything ever seen, the world’s largest matzo ball, weighing in at an astounding 267 pounds was unveiled today on the streets of New York to celebrate an upcoming basketball game between the New York Knicks and a team from Israel to benefit the world’s largest orphanage.
Officials from the New York Knicks, Israel’s largest orphanage, specialized chefs who worked for three months to create the behemoth ball gathered with NYPD police officers who escorted the oversized matzo monster from a special oversized kitchen in New Jersey, where the sumo-sized ball was created. After it was unveiled and measured amidst a cheering crowd of families and children, the ball found how short-lived fame is as it was cut into bite sized pieces and shared with the throngs gathered to witness history being made and then consumed. Leftovers were donated to a Brooklyn soup kitchen.
The massive round mound of matzo was trucked with police escort from a specially designed 100-gallon kettle in New Jersey where it slow boiled for two days by a team of a dozen chefs before being lifted by a custom designed “soup sling” by two dozen helpers into a large protective crate before being transported in a 24-foot freightliner through the streets of New York to its ultimate unveiling and measurement for the world record.
It was all to celebrate an upcoming basketball game, which will be played on October 18 at Madison Square Garden between the New York Knicks and Maccabi Electra Tel Aviv benefiting Migdal Ohr, the world’s largest orphanage in Northern Israel and home to nearly 7,000 orphaned, impoverished, underprivileged and new immigrant children.
Robert Katz, executive vice president of the American Friends of Migdal Ohr, said that when these teams played two years ago, it was the most successful exhibition basketball game in the history of the Garden. In 2005, Maccabi became the first international team to win on North American soil when they defeated the Toronto Raptors at Air Canada Centre.
“Everyone had a ball the last time we did this,” Katz said. “We figured why not have a ball – literally – this time made out of matzo to celebrate this amazing game coming up? The opportunity for everyone to participate in the festivities of the October game with the Knicks began today.”
The Guinness record-setting caloric colossus baked by Noah’s Ark Original Deli, stood three feet high and required an army of hens working around the clock to provide 1,000 eggs, combined with 80 pounds of margarine, with 200 pounds of matzo meal and 20 pounds of chicken base.
Noam Sokolow, owner of Noah’s Ark, who directed the planning and “deli development” of the behemoth ball, said, “This culinary caper really was all about making the impossible possible. Yes, Noah’s Ark has been voted the best corned beef sandwich in the United States, but now we’ve created something that helps more than an appetite … it helps draw attention to at-risk children.”
Israel Prize Laureate Rabbi Y.D. Grossman founded Migdal Ohr in 1972 with 18 children in a small one-story building in Northern Israel. Today Migdal Ohr is roughly the size of the Columbia University campus, where each day thousands of children from all over the world are fed, clothed, housed, educated and nurtured on to productive lives. Migdal Ohr runs a network of schools, providing academic and vocational studies while integrating new immigrant children into Israeli society through specialized curricula and after-school programs.
Tickets are available at migdalohrusa.org.
SOURCE Migdal Ohr