The Manischewitz Schmura Matzo Run
This past Tuesday, March 2nd The Manischewitz company held their annual Schmura Matzo Run. Schmura is the “preferred” Matzo of the annual Passover Seder. The most sacred of kosher traditions, the Schmura Matzo run, marks the production of this sacred matzo at the company’s new state-of-the-art matzo baking facility. Literally translated, Schmura means “watched” as this ceremonial matzo receives special supervision from the time the wheat is harvested to the production at the plant, ensuring that no water is introduced into the process before it’s time. Passover starts on Tuesday, March 30th and ends Tuesday, April 6th.
The Schmura Matzo run is the premiere kosher food ritual. This one-day-only run is attended by Senior Members of the Orthodox Union, dignitaries in the kosher world, congregational rabbis and lay leadership. The new Manischewitz plant is also home to the company’s other leading brands such as Goodman’s®, Horowitz Margareten®, Mother’s®, Mrs. Adler’s®, Mishpacha® and more. Manischewitz recently celebrated 120 years, which in Jewish law represents the number that honors old age, and now they are embarking on the next 120 years.
The Shmurah Matzoh run is complete in a one to ten hour shift. How many matzho’s are made in that run you might ask? There are about 200 individual Matzoh’s per case, and about 24 boxes in a case. That’s a lot of Matzohs!
At any given time there are at least five people on the floor overseeing the Matzoh process. Just three years ago Manischewitz switched from a old brick over to a more technology advanced temperature controlled oven, making the process more technologically inclined, electronically operated now. The old machine itself used to be 100ft, and the new improved one is 150ft-width 50inch’s.
