May Izhaki, 25: Partygoer with dreams of crisscrossing the globe

May Izhaki, 25, from Hod Hasharon, was murdered by Hamas terrorists while trying to flee the Supernova music festival on October 7.

She attended the rave with Jenny Nisimboim and Ilan Moshe Yaakov. At 6:30 a.m. she told her family that they were leaving the site of the festival.

But a couple hours later, she said they were stuck in a traffic jam and hadn’t progressed far from the site of the festival. The family later said that they learned from others that May had hidden in a fridge at the site of a bar set up at the festival.

For a week, May’s family searched desperately for any news, until they were informed that her body had been identified. Jenny and Ilan were also slain in the attack.

May was buried on October 15 in Hod Hasharon. She is survived by her mother, Sharon, and her older sister, Eden. Her father, Yehezkel, died in 2017.

Raised and educated in Hod Hasharon, her loved ones described her as smart, kind and beautiful, always surrounded by friends.

She loved to travel the world and had dreams of crisscrossing the globe and exploring different cultures. Her mother said May once told her: “The world is full of beauty! Israel is nice, but it’s so small and I wasn’t born for small — I was born for big, and out there everything is big. There you see everything — cultures, people of all colors, cities, religions. Out in the world you feel small and special and that’s what I want to feel.”

At age 20 she started working as a waitress at the Beer Garden in Tel Aviv and later became its events manager. In a post online Beer Garden described her as “smiling, kind, beloved and always helping and giving.”

At the same time, May was teaching herself computer science and had big dreams for her future career.

“My gorgeous, you loved life so much, you enjoyed even when things were tough, you loved to laugh and to make people laugh and to lighten the mood always,” her friend Tom Atsmon wrote on Facebook. “Keep dancing up in heaven, there nobody will stop the music anymore.”

On Memorial Day 2024, May’s sister, Eden, wrote on Facebook that “this year, bereavement came to our door, my sister, the dearest thing to me, the light of my life, was murdered.”

“Not a day goes by that my heart is not torn apart by longing, sharp and stabbing pain,” continued Eden. “I love you and you live every second and every hundredth of a second in my heart next to me.”

“I’ll remember you forever with a huge smile, a wide heart and endless joy for life.”

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