Ilai Baram, 27: Ice bath expert who ‘lit up every place’

Ilai Baram, 27, from Ramat Gan, was murdered by Hamas terrorists at the Supernova music festival on October 7.

He attended the festival with two friends, Yonatan Zeidman and Liam Shrem, who were both also killed.

Ilai was considered missing for three days before his body was found on Tuesday, October 10. He was buried the following day at the Menashe Junction Cemetery.

He is survived by his parents, Amos and Adital, as well as his siblings, Evyatar and Saar. He is also survived by several loving aunts and uncles, including TV host Guy Zu-Aretz.

Ilai was an instructor at Ice Therapy, a Tel Aviv-based wellness center that provides therapeutic ice baths. He specialized in the Wim Hof method of ice bath immersion and reached a worldwide audience when he demonstrated his techniques on the 2021 season of Ninja Israel.

He was later interviewed by Israel’s Channel 12 about ice bathing’s health benefits in August of 2023.

Ilai was known for putting rubber ducks in his ice baths, an act of whimsy that exemplified his fun-loving nature. During his funeral, friends handed out rubber ducks for mourners to place on the gravestone instead of the customary stones that Jewish mourners place on graves to show respect.

Since Ilai was killed, friends and family have launched a number of social media campaigns to bring people together and submerge in freezing water as a way to memorialize him.

Friends and family described Ilai as a magnetizing presence, drawing others in with his smiling demeanor. He was very close with his extended family, who wrote in their eulogies online that Ilai was an active and energetic figure in all aspects of life.

“It’s much quieter without him,” Guy Zu-Aretz and his brother Roi joked in an interview with Israel’s Kan Radio in February. “The family is much too polite now.”

Moshik Galamin, a TV personality and friend of Ilai’s, wrote on Facebook: “You lit up every place you went. Everywhere. It is a great privilege for me to have known a soul like yours.”

“Everyone who knew you fell in love with you,” wrote Israeli actress Yael Bar-Zohar, who is married to Guy. “You were one of a kind.”

“A child of endless love,” wrote his father, Amos. “Our sun went out, and we are left with a big, painful black hole in the middle… There is no replacement for you.”

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