Liora Ben Tsur, daughter of the late Marcelle Taljah's South African Melktert Recipe

“A Place at the Table” is a commemorative project that documents the favorite dishes of those lost on October 7 with the help of their families.   

When Marcelle Taljah would walk through the cornfields on her parents’ farm in South Africa, she loved to gently caress the stalks with her open palm, feeling the morning dewdrops. As a girl, she dreamed of immigrating to Israel and feared she wouldn’t be able to manage without her parents. But she also had faith, so she moved to Israel where she met her husband Jacob who also came from a farming family in South Africa, but unlike her, he was born into a Christian home. He became a priest, but later chose to convert. After they married, they settled in Be’er Sheva, where they had four children: Liora, Yedidia, Bezalel, and Shira. 

In the 1990s, the government offered them an opportunity to relocate to the southern Hebron Mountains to settle in a strategic area for the state. As passionate Zionists with an agricultural background, the couple accepted the offer and established Taljah Farm where they raised sheep. In 2015, Jacob tragically died in a work accident on the farm, and following his death, his children took over the management of the farm.

Like Marcelle, her children grew up on this South African cinnamon-spiked milk tart. “My mother was an amazing baker,” says her daughter, Liora Ben Tsur. “She made many traditional South African dishes for us.” Liora’s favorite was the milk tart. As she makes it in her mother’s memory, she says she longs for a moment to be a little girl again with her mother making the sweet. She also reflects on her mother as a woman deeply connected to nature and a devoted Zionist. Marcelle instilled in her children the belief that there is no other country, and that it must always be protected. To her, even a wrapper or chewing gum should never be discarded on its sacred land. She was a modest and generous woman, often giving money to those in need.

Marcelle would insist on taking public transportation from the farm to Kibbutz Ein Hashlosha, where Liora lives with her husband and children, even if it meant switching four buses along the way. She would step off the bus, arms full of treats, often with the famous milk tart in hand. A true grandmother, she never hesitated to jump on the trampoline alongside her grandchildren. She was always there for them. 

Just hours before Simchat Torah, Liora gave birth to her third daughter, Asif. Marcelle, who came to visit her daughter in the hospital, had the chance to meet her new granddaughter and hold her for the first and last time. After the visit, Marcelle celebrated Simchat Torah with Liora’s husband Dor and their other children on their kibbutz near the Gaza border. On the morning of October 7, when the sirens sounded, Dor and the children rushed into the safe room. Marcelle, who had been sleeping in a guest apartment on the other side of the kibbutz, quickly made her way to join them.

At the same time, in her hospital bed, Liora began receiving a flood of messages about terrorists infiltrating Ein HaShlosha. Holding her infant daughter in one hand and her cell phone in the other, she called her two brothers from the farm in the southern Hebron Hills, asking them to save her family and friends. They managed to rescue Liora’s husband and children, along with several other residents. But, tragically, they found their mother lying in a pool of blood, shot in the back, holding a bag full of sweets for her grandchildren.

“The longing of an orphan for her mother is indescribable, especially when you become a mother yourself,” says Liora. Her only consolation is that her husband, children, and brothers survived. There were moments, she recalls, when she thought none of them would make it out of that inferno alive. “A miracle happened here, and I am grateful for that,” she says. 

Did you prepare the dish? Share a photo of it and tag it #A_Place_at_the_Table  to honor the memory of the late Marcelle Taljah.