The festival Dalit Ram Aharon of Kibbutz Nir Oz dreamed of in 2023 was meant to be a modest celebration for women and mothers from communities near the Gaza border. After October 7, it became something entirely different, something she could not have imagined before life changed beyond recognition.
Ram Aharon, an NLP coach and therapeutic styling facilitator, founded “Festimama,” a festival of workshops, music and empowerment. Its first pilot was held in June 2023 in the Eshkol Regional Council and “was very successful,” she recalled with a smile.
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Dalit Ram Aharon (right) with the late Shiri Bibas. “She was a good friend, full of life and funny, and she deserves to be remembered that way, not as a tragic figure.”
(Photo: Courtesy of Dalit Ram)
The one person missing was her closest friend, Shiri Bibas, who was more enthusiastic about the festival than anyone else but could not attend because her son Kfir was still a baby.
“Shiri told me she would come next time,” Ram Aharon said. “I decided the next one would be in mid-October, and we kept talking about it. It meant a great deal to her that it succeeded. We agreed she would help me produce it, and we dreamed it up together. She even proposed inviting Alma Zohar, Din Din Aviv and Aya Korem to perform. I didn’t have any budget and told her it wasn’t realistic, but she was determined to see it happen and to celebrate there.”
The October festival, of course, never took place. On October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorists infiltrated communities near the Gaza border, including Nir Oz, where both Ram Aharon and Bibas were born, raised and living. In one brutal Saturday, lives, dreams and plans were shattered.
Despite the chaos and overwhelming pain, Ram Aharon decided deep down that she would not give up on the festival. She knew that one day she would bring it to life as planned, but vowed not to hold it as long as Shiri remained captive in Gaza.
Bibas's story is etched into the Israeli consciousness and recognized worldwide. Shiri Bibas, 32, was abducted from her home in Nir Oz along with her sons Ariel, then 4, and Kfir, nearly 9 months old. Her husband, Yarden Bibas, was kidnapped earlier that day. Hours later, Shiri and the children were taken from their home’s balcony. Her parents, Yossi and Margit Silberman, who also lived in Nir Oz, were murdered in their home.
In February 2025, 16 months after the abduction, the bodies of Kfir and Ariel were returned to Israel. A day later, Shiri was brought home for burial. Examinations determined the three were brutally murdered in the first weeks of the war by the terrorists holding them.
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Dalit and Shiri with Oren and Ariel. “It was very important to her that ‘Festimama’ take place and that we celebrate there.”
(Photo: Courtesy of Dalit Ram)
A year after Shiri and her sons were laid to rest, Ram Aharon decided the time had come. “One of the things that was most important to me after Shiri was brought home was that people would also know the Shiri who was alive,” she said. “Shiri is not the tragic figure everyone knows from October 7. She was so much more than that.
“She was a good friend, a loving woman, someone who laughed all the time, with a huge smile. She was full of life and so funny. She deserves to be remembered that way, not as a tragic figure.”
‘One of the legacies Shiri left me’
The renewed “Festimama,” scheduled for April 30 to May 1, 2026, at Mitzpeh Gvulot in the Eshkol region, is set to be far larger than the modest June 2023 pilot. The production is being led by InDgigs, the producers of the inDnegev festival.
Beyond its scale and performers, Ram Aharon said her guiding principle is to build the festival in Bibas’ spirit. “I’m creating it in a way that reflects what Shiri loved and her values,” she explained. “So the women who come will have the opportunity to get to know her.”
One of her first steps was to contact the three singers Bibas had suggested, Alma Zohar, Din Din Aviv and Aya Korem. All agreed to participate. “For me, this is one of the legacies Shiri left me,” Ram Aharon said.
Singer Dana Berger is also set to perform, and a lecture by Lihi Lapid is planned. A special panel will honor Yossi and Margit Silberman and Shiri Bibas, with family members and close friends sharing different facets of who she was in life.
The festival will also include movement, art and empowerment workshops; stalls selling art, clothing, jewelry and secondhand items by women from the Gaza border region; food stands; and a treatment area. The beer served at the festival, “Johnbeer,” named in memory of Johnny Siman Tov, will carry a message of longing alongside a love of life and the commemoration of loved ones.
Yarden Bibas, who was released from captivity weeks before the bodies of his wife and children were returned, has expressed strong support. “I remember how they sat together in the kibbutz sukkah a few days before October 7 and planned the festival,” he wrote in a recent Instagram post.
“It’s very important to me that people know Shiri and give her the place she truly had in her life. That they remember the amazing and loving woman she was, her dreams, her huge heart, her laughter and her smile, and commemorate her in the way she sought to bring light to other women", he added.
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Yarden Bibas with the late Shiri, Ariel and Kfir. “It is important to me that she be remembered as the amazing and loving woman she was”
(Photo: from Instagram)
“It was most important for me to receive the family’s blessing for the entire event, and they are all very supportive,” Ram Aharon said. “Yarden, Shiri’s sister Dana, her sister-in-law Ofri. It’s important to them, and especially to Yarden, that people separate between the tragic figure they imagine when they think of her and who she really was.”
Another principle that is no less important to her is that all the festival’s workshops will be led by women from communities near the Gaza border region, to promote and support them. “These are women who have been dealt very hard blows over the past two and a half years,” she explained, “and through this festival it's important to me to help and strengthen them as well.”
She stressed that the initiative is not a donation drive but an early ticket sale at discounted prices, alongside perks donated by various supporters. “We want people to buy tickets, enjoy the gifts and help us make this happen,” she said. “It’s a win-win for everyone.”
Life's upheaval
Ram Aharon knows what it means to rebuild. After 20 years in education, she changed direction during the COVID pandemic, completed a program supporting women in Israel’s periphery in launching their first businesses, studied NLP therapy and therapeutic styling, and established her own practice. But October 7 was different.
She, her husband Ahi-Moshe and their three children were in the safe room of their Nir Oz home when terrorists broke in, ransacked the house and tried to force open the safe room door. Her husband held the handle from the inside while she shielded the children, making sure they remained silent.
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Dalit, her husband and their children in the safe room on October 7, before they realized that terrorists had infiltrated the area
(Photo: Private album)
“In hindsight, I think we were lucky that looters entered our house,” she said. “They were satisfied with destroying the home and taking what they could, but we stayed alive.”
Only at 6 p.m., about 12 hours later, did soldiers arrive to rescue the family. They were taken to the kibbutz command center and, after a crowded day in a fortified kindergarten, evacuated to Eilat.
Her elderly parents were also rescued by what she describes as a miracle, after their caregivers held the safe room door handles shut until help arrived, while all of their neighbors were abducted. But the cumulative toll was heavy: a year and a half after the massacre, her father died of a broken heart, and about six months ago her mother also died.
“Instead of holding a festival at the end of October (2023) and celebrating life, life changed,” she said. “That is exactly why it’s so important to us that it takes place. ‘Festimama’ allows us to celebrate life near Nir Oz, which despite the terrible trauma we experienced that day, will always remain our beloved home.
“Maybe precisely because of everything we’ve been through, it’s so important to celebrate what remains and what we have now, because nothing can be taken for granted anymore.”
“A huge embrace for us”
Reut Ressler, a resident of one of the Gaza border communities and a close friend of Ram Aharon, has accompanied “Festimama” since its inception. The two met when Ram Aharon joined the women’s community Ressler founded in the Eshkol region, even before October 7.
“Dalit was one of the most prominent participants in the community, and when she said she wanted to establish a women’s festival at the beginning of 2023, I was immediately excited,” Ressler recalled. “In an amazing and inspiring way, not long after she announced the festival, she managed to produce a high-quality women-led event with facilitators from the Gaza border region as well as other parts of the country.”
Ressler led a “psychodrama for self-fulfillment” workshop at the June 2023 festival and is set to facilitate the same workshop at the upcoming “Festimama.”
“That festival was incredible,” she recalls. “Dozens of women who were strangers gathered together, and the connection between us was immediate. We opened up, shared, danced and sang. We left feeling filled with goodness and wanting more of that magic.”
Ressler, like Ram Aharon and everyone who was in the Gaza border region that Saturday, also has a personal reckoning with October 7. The late Tamar Kedem Siman Tov, who was murdered in her home in Nir Oz together with her husband, Johnny, and their children, twins Arbel and Shahar and young Omer, was one of her closest friends and a woman who inspired her.
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Tamar Kedem Siman Tov with her husband, Johnny, and their children who were killed on Oct. 7 in Nir Oz
(Photo: Courtesy of the family)
“Tamar was creative, generous and very wise,” she said wistfully. “She was a model for me of meaningful female strength. Tamar was a candidate to head our regional council, and even before being elected she had already founded a residents’ movement that began operating and making an impact.”
“This is also one of the reasons the new ‘Festimama’ moves me so deeply,” Ressler added. “For me, the festival is a kind of repair. It is a choice for life, a renewed choice of myself, a choice of us, the women and mothers of the Gaza border region, who have been through so many upheavals.
“We have faced the loss of people, homes and communities, alongside complex challenges within the family nest, in our relationships and with our children, who were exposed to horrors we never imagined they would see. This production is a huge embrace for us.”
To support “Festimama,” a women’s festival in the Gaza border region held in memory of the late Shiri Bibas, visit the campaign page.
