Mirta Werber, Mother of the late Alon Werber's Orange Cake with Chocolate Glaze 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.

The last time Mirta Weber saw her son Alon Weber was after their Friday night dinner on October 6. Alon was leaving for a party with friends and she called out: “Bye sweetheart, I love you.” It was only the next morning, when she tried to reach Alon and couldn’t that she learned he was at Nova festival.

The orange cake Mirta now bakes in Alon memory was one she used to make on weekends from Yom Kippur through the winter. With the arrival of spring, she would stop and wait until the next year. “And every summer, Alon would wait until Yom Kippur and ask me when I was finally going to make the cake again,” she shares. The addition of the chocolate glaze on top was Alon’s idea. It “made it irresistible,” Mirta adds. From then on, the family called it “Alon’s cake.”

Alon was born to Mirta and Dani Werber on February 2, 1997. He was the middle child, between his older brother Tom and younger sister Lian. When he was a baby, the family moved to Budapest, Hungary, for his father’s work. Alon lived there until third grade when they returned to Israel and settled in Ra’anana.

He loved sports and was a walking encyclopedia when it came to soccer. He was always a good kid, surrounded by friends, but it was only after his death that they learned from his friends how much he meant to them. “We never knew the impact he had on others,” Mirta shares. Alon was modest, not the kind who liked to stand out, yet he was the anchor of the group, the one everyone turned to for advice. His name, which means oak tree, suited him perfectly, he says. He was someone you could lean on.

Alon went to the Nova festival with a big group of friends. In the morning, when the rocket sirens began, they tried to escape in a convoy of three cars. Alon was in the first car with his friend Guy Iluz. They drove north until they reached a police checkpoint, which blocked their way and turned them back south. Near Kibbutz Re’im, they came under fire. Alon was hit immediately and killed. In a harrowing video that circulated online, the terrorists can be seen firing again at his body outside the car. Guy, who was driving, shouted into the phone to their friends, “They hit Alon!” and tried to flee. He was kidnapped to Gaza and murdered in captivity.

“At home, when the chaos began, we weren’t worried, because we thought he was at a party near Jerusalem,” Mirta recalls. She sent him a message at 8:30 a.m.: “How are you?” But there was no answer. By then, he was already gone.

Since Alon was killed, Mirta hasn’t made his cake. The first time she did was when we met her on what would have been Alon’s 28th birthday. She planned to bring the orange cake topped with chocolate glaze to the cemetery, a place the family now calls “Alon’s yard.”

There, at sunset, they would gather with friends and family to eat them alongside coffee, tea, arak, and snacks. “We’ll sit with Alon, raise a glass in his honor,” she says, adding, “We make it more about joy than sorrow.” That is also the message she feels is important to pass on to Alon’s siblings and friends: “Alongside the pain, there can also be joy. Nothing stops. We go on.”