Those big projects included a life-sized balloon motorcycle and the Pink Panther. Seeing that he had a talent for it, he took courses and attended conferences, becoming certified as a balloon artist. Today, when not working on exhibits, he teaches close to 300 students, does balloon shows, and takes on private jobs.

While Kobi says he always liked art, balloon sculpting requires both an artistic eye and engineering prowess. Some of his sculptures are freestanding, but others, like his models of the Sphinx and the Eiffel Tower, require aluminum rods and netting to create frames that are covered with balloons.

Balloons today are manufactured in a rainbow of colors, but in only two main shapes: round and long (“modeling”) balloons. (Kobi did source a small quantity of special cone-shaped balloons to use as shark teeth and lion fangs.) The modeling balloons can be twisted, braided, or crimped to create a variety of effects. The round balloons can be used to create an effect called distortion, in which the artist puts one or two balloons inside another balloon. Kobi employs this for details like making a balloon eye with a pupil or molding a round balloon into the shape of a giant animal’s ear or tooth.

When we enter the exhibit, the first thing that meets our eyes is a 23-foot-wide, 15-pound bald eagle suspended from the ceiling in the colors of the American flag. Its balloon-feathered wings are spread against a background of red and white stripes. Kobi admits this was one of the harder sculptures to pull off.

“It was a new design, because I wanted to celebrate America, and it had to be very precise,” he says.

It’s also his favorite, because it’s the first thing people see, and it disabuses them right away of the preconception that balloon art is, as he said, just shaping dogs and swords.

The next room shows the different rooms of a house, from a living room with a bucket of blue balloon “paint” to an alley scene to a yellow New York City taxi made of balloons. Wending our way through strings of fairy lights, we pass into an enormous space that has been transformed into… a jungle.

Here are towering, vividly colored balloon renditions of animals. We see a giraffe, an elephant, a toucan, a crocodile, a hippo, a tiger, a zebra, a parrot, and a massive lion with a mane of long orange balloons. The lion, constructed from 8,000 balloons over four days, has a motorized mouth that opens and shuts. This was an engineering challenge for Kobi, as the fangs had to be positioned just right so the balloons didn’t pop each other during the movement of the jaw. A “waterfall” made of cascading modeling balloons in shades of blue and white covers one wall. There’s even a balloon explorer in a safari hat. (Dr. Livingstone, I presume?)

The jungle room also offers a generous enclosed space filled with beach-ball-sized, thicker-skinned balloons for kids to toss around. In the middle of the room is a ball pit where children are bouncing and diving with gusto.

“We know kids need the active stuff,” Kobi says.

The jungle area leads to a room for interactive gaming on large screens, for kids who are ready for another activity. There’s also a small snack area, and from there we continue our tour of the exhibit to go — cue the Caribbean music — under the sea. After passing an intimidating 70-foot-high balloon octopus with moving tentacles (5,000 balloons), we come upon a 70-foot tunnel constructed entirely of balloons in shades of blue that make you feel like you’re underwater. All manner of fish “swim” here, suspended from the ceiling, with balloon algae and rocks on the floor. There’s a toothy shark (3,000 gray balloons plus hundreds of smaller red ones for its mouth) and even a balloon diver with his oxygen tank cruising above us.

“This took nine days of work by 200 artists,” Kobi says. “The tunnel alone is made of 34,000 balloons.”

We continue wandering and find ourselves in the polar world, greeted by ferocious-looking balloon polar bears. We see an igloo with a balloon Eskimo outside warming himself by an illuminated balloon fire, and a hill populated by adorable balloon penguins. Balloon “clouds” on the ceiling release “snow” comprised of smaller balloons.

As we tour, Kobi is constantly on the lookout for anything in need of tweaking — a balloon out of place or popped. He’ll kneel and expertly tie together a few balloons that have become detached or rearrange balloons that moved out of place.

“People walk on them, occasionally they pop them,” he shrugs, but concedes that no one has ever deliberately snuck in a pin and attempted to sabotage the exhibits.

Our next room is a trip into outer space. We view a 39-foot balloon rocket (the exhibit’s tallest piece) and a balloon astronaut planting a flag on the moon, as well as an airplane and a sky filled with stars.

Back on earth, we wind through a white maze — its walls constructed entirely of balloons — into a music display. A balloon figure sits at a balloon grand piano, complete with a balloon keyboard and a raised lid. There are balloon performers (singer and keyboardist) and a huge golden balloon saxophone.

We now leave the natural world for the man-made world, arriving at the final exhibit. This is Kobi’s pièce de résistance: world-famous monuments. Who knew the Sphinx and the pyramids could be so masterfully reproduced with 10,000 balloons, including even a little Arab boy and his camel shuffling by? (This exhibit took six artists and two days to pull off.)

The Statue of Liberty, constructed entirely of 8,000 braided green balloons, scrapes the ceiling at 30 feet. And not so far away is a golden Eiffel Tower, another 12,000 balloons.

“It was done in three parts,” Kobi explains. “Each team worked on a different part — the base, the middle, the top. Then we used a safety line to position the pieces on top of each other.”

Kobi added creative French touches to the scene, including a little balloon girl walking her dog and a balloon artist complete with a balloon palette, brush, and easel.

We leave the room passing under London Bridge. To make sure everyone recognizes it as such, Kobi created balloon King’s Guards with balloon bearskin hats.

Amid these world-class monuments, we can’t help but hope that one day, in a different political climate, Kobi will be able to construct a large-scale balloon reproduction of the Kosel, complete with balloon Jews of many stripes and a few kvitlach and balloon pigeons nestled into the crevices. Maybe for an Israeli show?

The scope and artistry of this exhibit are so immense that I can’t help but ask Kobi if he lives and dreams balloons.

“I do think about them a lot,” he admits. “This summer was very high pressure. I came here on June 13 to start planning this exhibit and then went back to Israel on July 4, because we are simultaneously working on creating a balloon exhibit with a fairy tales theme in Hangar 11. I flew back to New York two weeks after that, but I’m still managing two projects at once.”

On Shabbos, a non-Jewish staff manages the exhibit. Kobi, who is shomer Shabbos (although he doesn’t wear a yarmulke to the exhibit, in a conscious effort to keep it apolitical), typically attends the Shabbos tefillah and seudah at Chabad of Midtown, close to where he’s staying. But most weeks, he can’t resist walking over to the exhibit just to sit and listen to people’s comments.

“During the week, I’m here fixing things, keeping an eye on everything,” he says. “On Shabbat, I can’t do any of that, so I just sit back and enjoy my nachat.”

Balloon  Backstory

The credit for making this unique exhibit happen belongs to the Eizik family. Yonatan Eizik, affable and astute, is here making it happen on behalf of his family. His father, entrepreneur Zev Eizik, originally hails from Melbourne, Australia, and became known for transforming a dilapidated warehouse in the Tel Aviv port into Hangar 11, a large venue for concerts, simchahs, and other events. Prior to the war, the very first “Balloon Story” exhibit was held at Hangar 11.

“Six years before that, I had gone to India and worked on a big show where we built a dragon six feet high and huge parakeets,” Kobi relates. “When I got back, I dreamed of doing something similar in Israel. We have other kid-friendly shows, like Lego shows, so why not balloons?”

He proposed the idea to the Eiziks, who were intrigued. But then Covid shut down all the event spaces.

“Hangar 11 is always the first to be shut down and the last to reopen,” Yonatan says with a wry smile.

It wasn’t until the summer of 2023 that a Balloon Story exhibit opened in Israel, very similar to the one in New York.

“It was in the middle of the whole political balagan in Israel,” Kobi relates. “But somehow balloons are special. Unlike many other areas in the entertainment world, in balloon art, there are no egos. Our artists came from many different points of view, but while on the outside, many people hated each other, inside our differences disappeared and everyone got along great.”

Balloon Story in Tel Aviv was a big hit; over 220,000 people visited. Then the war started. So many areas of Israeli life shut down.

The Thursday before October 7, a huge rave was held at Hangar 11. The Eizik family wasn’t there; they had gone to Yam Hamelach for the last days of the chag.

“Each member of my family has a different story about how we got back to Tel Aviv, but we all made it back alive, and we are very grateful,” he says.

Yonatan himself had recently returned from a miluim mission with the Israeli Navy. He was not called back up because his wife was due to give birth imminently.

That Sunday morning, following the massacre, Kikar Dizengoff in Tel Aviv was jammed with people and cars looking for ways to help.

“It became the distribution center for clothing and food,” Yonatan explains. “But the police told everyone they had to move to a closed space.

“My father called me the next morning and said, ‘I want them to move into Hangar 11. Go see if we can do it.’ I live just 15 minutes from there, so I ran over and got things started. With about 20 volunteers, we organized very quickly to set it up as the new distribution center.”

Hundreds of cars arrived with donations. The volunteers accepted truckloads of potatoes, canned goods, clothing, anything that could help the evacuees or soldiers.

As the war went on, and Israelis continued to struggle, the Eiziks decided to expand their chesed initiative. They created a space within Hangar 11 where soldiers returning from the front could enjoy an elegant date experience with their spouses. Even more ambitious, they undertook an initiative that perhaps set a record in the Jewish world: They opened the hangar to host ten separate, simultaneous chuppahs.

“Each couple could invite 100 people, and we provided the food, the flowers, even the wedding dresses,” Yonatan says. “The only thing they had to buy was the ring, since that’s halachah. Every big-name artist in Israel came to make the music.”

When the Nova exhibit was launched, in memory of the hundreds of Jews massacred at the festival on October 7, the Eizik family lent their expertise and offered to host it at Hangar 11. In the end, however, it was held elsewhere, going on tour across the US.

Bring It Here

When the Eiziks decided to try a balloon exhibit in the US, they hoped to provide employment for some of the many Israelis whose income had dried up. They brought over 30 workers from Israel, even though it would have been cheaper to hire help locally.

They knew bringing Balloon Story overseas would be no simple proposition. First and foremost, they needed the right venue. Yonatan began visiting different sites. Places like Bubble Planet and the American Dream Mall weren’t large enough, and at American Dream, there were too many competing activities.

“New Jersey was cheaper, but we wanted to do it right and make a big splash,” Yonatan says. “In the end, Manhattan was the best choice.”

Apart from a few mentions in Jewish media, the organizers deliberately avoided any overt references to the show being an Israeli initiative. Yonatan mostly keeps his kippah in his pocket.

“This is a family-oriented exhibit,” Yonatan emphasizes. “If we were to end up with pro-Palestinian demonstrators outside making trouble, then families wouldn’t come.”

Keeping the event apolitical also meant that he only needed to hire two security guards. (By contrast, security for the Nova exhibit cost close to a million dollars.)

The Israeli team that flew in included 14 balloon artists, plus experts in lighting, layout, gaming, and logistics. Another 200 balloon artists from around the world joined the fray. Kobi organized eight teams, each with its own leader, to construct the exhibits. It took nine full days to build everything. Kobi creates the basic designs with specifications for size, but gives his artists latitude to embellish the details.

Prior to beginning production, Yonatan sent Kobi to a balloon artists’ conference in Chicago to see the exhibits and lectures, get ideas, and meet American balloon artists.

“There were 700 people there paying big money to attend,” Kobi says. “It’s a big industry.”

Yoni and his father flew in to attend the last two days of the conference, and were surprised to spy a group of chareidi-looking women among the attendees. As it turns out, there are quite a few frum women in the balloon business (they even have their own WhatsApp chat with over 20 participants).

Mishpacha spoke to one of them, Debby Levi from Passaic, who together with her niece by marriage, Judy (Yehudis) Levi, runs Inflated Creations. She jokes that their colleagues at conferences call them “the ladies who eat from tinfoil,” referring to their packaged kosher meals. Debby, who has been in the business for 33 years and does balloons for events like Bike4Chai and the Yeshiva University graduation, happily joined Kobi’s teams, working on several different exhibits.

“In all my years in the business, I’ve never worked that hard,” she told Mishpacha. “We’d begin at 9 a.m. and end at 8 p.m. But the results are exceptional.”

Debby, who has a special needs son, appreciates that the Eiziks gave away many free tickets to special needs visitors. But Kobi puts in that this is nothing new.

“The Eiziks are very special people,” he says. “In Israel, they also give free admission to evacuees, the disabled, and children with special needs.”

The Balloon Story team did their best to arrange advertising and social media in New York, but Kobi came up with the most fun way to generate buzz: He designed a few costumes — a Minion made of balloons, a cartoon character astride a bird — that he and colleagues donned to go walking through Central Park.

Channel 7 and the New York Post visited the exhibit and gave it glowing coverage. Kobi’s favorite praise came from a 97-year-old man who came with his grandchildren.

“I’ve been to lots of exhibits — the Louvre, the Met,” he told Kobi. “But this was the best one!”

“We did this project quickly, and a little on the fly,” Kobi admits. “The next time around, we hope to have a longer lead time, and then we can book tours by camps and organizations.”

Closing Shop

All good things must come to an end, and the Balloon Story exhibit finished on Sunday, August 25, just before we went to press. But it went out not with a whimper, but with a huge bang. On the final day, families bought tickets for the Popping Party, at which kids were invited to come help pop all the balloons.

Since balloon sculptures can’t withstand the temperature fluctuations and other rigors of transport, there’s no way to preserve them for future shows.

“We did a popping party when we had the exhibit in Israel a year ago,” Kobi says. “We give the kids plastic goggles, noise-canceling headphones, and toothpicks, and we hire a DJ to play music. Last summer we had 500 kids come in, and it only took them 20 minutes to pop all the balloons.”

At least those sad piles of deflated latex on the floor won’t go to waste. They got swept up, packed, and sent back to the balloon supply company, where they will be recycled into doggie chew toys (on sale in the Armory gift shop along with Balloon Story T-shirts and balloon kits).

“The latex is eco-friendly — it’s biodegradable,” Kobi makes sure to point out.

The thought of all those painstakingly created sculptures felled by children gleefully wielding toothpicks makes me very sad. But perhaps we should take it as a lesson for life: Nothing we create, however beautiful, lasts forever. The good news is that with a little latex and pumped air, those jungles, seas, polar regions, and monuments can rise again in all their glory, to enchant us with their artistry and color.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1026)