A sinister seder set
Finally, someone has come along to anthropomorphize the seder plate — with attitude.
Credit Israeli designer Ran Aviv with the vision to see that when they’re properly animated, such Pesach staples as matzah, gefilte fish, and celery have the makings of action heroes — and credit him also with the skill to render them as stunning trading cards. Aviv is an art director at Bagelcode, an international South Korean-based gaming company with an office in Tel Aviv.
The cards are in Hebrew, and so are some of the concomitant puns — but not all of them.
Marorobot, Zeroapocalypse, and Karpassive Aggressive mash up the Hebrew terms for bitter herbs, shankbone, and dipping vegetable with English. Kneidlaser plays on the Yiddish term for matzah balls, kneidlach.
More explanation of the Hebrew is required for Betzanchanit — a merger of beitzah, egg, and tzanchan, paratrooper; Machshefilte Fish, from machsheifa, the Hebrew for witch, and gefilte fish, Yiddish for stuffed fish; and Becheyayin, which merges the Hebrew words for crying and wine and could aptly be translated as Winer.
And then there are three that seem to evoke contemporary Israeli idioms that, alas, I don’t understand, but ChatGPT does: Charoset Shmuot plays on an idiom for spreading rumors, Yeudah L’shimtza is a phrase meaning notorious that contains the letters that spell matzah, and Mitchazeret combines chazeret, meaning horesradish, with the idea of returning or a comeback.
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