Ram Shalom, 24: Talented soccer player dreamed of life in Miami

Ram Shalom, 24, from Givat Ze’ev, was murdered by Hamas terrorists while trying to flee the Supernova music festival on October 7.

Ram attended the rave with a large group of revelers, including his close childhood friend Idan Dor.

When they realized that Hamas terrorists had attacked the rave, they headed for their car and tried to escape the site of the festival. Ram told his mother that they were leaving the rave and not to worry. At 9:30 a.m., Idan told his sister the pair were hiding, and that was the last that was heard from them.

After five days of waiting and searching, Ram’s family was informed that his body had been identified. Officers told his mother that he and Idan had been slain trying to fight back against the Hamas gunmen.

Ram was buried in Jerusalem on October 15 — alongside his best friend Idan. He is survived by his mother, Nurit, and his older brother, Tom. His father, Dan, died when Ram was 14.

Born in Jerusalem, Ram attended schools in the capital and in Givat Ze’ev, including the Denmark High School in Jerusalem. For more than a decade he played soccer on local teams, including Hapoel Katamon, according to a state eulogy.

Ram deliberated enlisting the IDF under the category of athlete, to enable him to keep playing, but instead he chose to join the Paratroopers Brigade, later completing a platoon commander’s course. After his release, Ram worked as a security guard with Israel Railways and later spent several months touring South America. After returning he got a job as a porter at the Ben Gurion Airport.

Idan and Ram were rarely far from each other — they went to the same high school, played on the same soccer team and later worked together at the airport — and were killed together at the Supernova festival and buried side by side.

His mother said Ram had plans to study electrical engineering and to live and work alongside his brother, Tom, in Miami. Ram and Nurit had only returned from a trip to Florida a few days before he was killed, and Ram was already planning his return.

Nurit told a local Jerusalem news site that “he admired me and I admired him. Ram was my oxygen. Everything he did he would seek my advice and vice versa. He never argued with me, always spoke respectfully and pleasantly. He was very mature, something his friends can attest to.”

She described her son as “bashful with an amazing smile, he loved to help others. He was the one who would connect friends together, he was light. They would always hang out at our house. He had a huge heart. He was a person who wanted only to do good, he didn’t know how to speak badly of others.

Nurit said if Ram ever “heard me saying something out of place, he would tell me not to speak that way… I can’t believe that I’ll never hear his voice again or speak to him again… I’m still waiting for him to call me ‘Mom,’ and I still can’t comprehend that it won’t ever happen again.”

His older brother, Tom, wrote on Facebook on what would have been Ram’s 25th birthday, to “a boy whose whole life was ahead of him.”

Tom recalled the time they had recently spent together in Miami: “The laughter, the experiences, the conversations just between you and me, if only we had had more time… we may live in different worlds today, but my beloved brother, our memories are eternal and live on everywhere in both worlds.”

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