As Alma Levin Fridman and Revital Shamir, two IDF widows, prepared to mark Israeli Memorial Day on Monday night and Tuesday, they spoke about life without their partners.

Maj. (res.) Itamar Levin Fridman, 34, served in the Eilat-based IDF counter-terrorism unit Lotar and was killed on November 11, 2024, in Gaza.

Maj. Mordechay (Moti) Shamir, 29, an officer in the Golani Brigade’s reconnaissance unit, was killed on October 7, 2023, while battling invading Hamas terrorists in Kibbutz Re’im.

Fridman and Shamir are both active in the IDF Widows and Orphans Organization, and as young widows, their lives bear certain similarities.

Both of the couples met at a young age — the Shamirs while serving in the military, and the Levin Fridmans as teens in Eilat, in their local Scouts youth group.

After they were widowed, both women made crucial decisions about the next steps in their families’ lives.

‘I wanted to realize his dream’

Shamir gave birth in February 2024 to daughter Ori, their second child, four months after her husband was killed.

She then built the dream house that Moti had planned to construct himself in Yair Farm, an Israeli settlement in the West Bank, where they had been living in a mobile home.

“It was his dream and his baby, and I understood that I wanted to realize that dream,” said Shamir.

Two months ago, Shamir and her two children moved into their new home; it was two days before February 28, the start of the joint American and Israeli war against Iran.

“I suddenly found myself in a big house with our own safe room after running in previous wars to my sister’s house,” said Shamir. “I felt isolated, carrying two kids during nighttime sirens, but then my friends ended up taking shelter in my house, and I loved that I could take care of them.”

There were other situations that she couldn’t have anticipated, like resolving her longstanding argument with Moti over real grass versus synthetic turf for their new garden.

“There are situations when I say, ‘You’re not here, and my abilities are more limited,'” said Shamir. “I said, ‘He’s not here to cut the grass,’ so I won that argument. But that’s also painful.”

‘He wanted to make an impact’

The Levin Fridmans, who married while studying at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Beersheba, had moved back to Eilat, deciding they wanted to live in the resort city they loved, near their two sets of parents.

“Eilat is our community, it has always enveloped us; it’s part of who we are,” said Levin Fridman.

Itamar Levin Fridman, an economist by training, had recently turned to education as a profession, becoming a homeroom teacher and math instructor in a local high school, as well as lecturing at a local college.

He also volunteered widely in the community, and loved the Red Sea and Eilat Mountains — the body of water and mountain range that surround Eilat.

Alma Fridman Levin’s family founded Eilat’s famed underwater observatory — Israel’s largest public aquarium — but it was her husband who was a diver, spending his free time hiking and diving.

“He wanted to make an impact, to take responsibility, to change things,” said Levin Fridman. “I used to laugh and call him a megalomaniac, but at the same time I knew who he was and I believed in him.”

After they moved to Eilat, Itamar decided to join Lotar, the Eilat anti-terrorism unit, which was one of the most influential decisions in his life, and now, in hers.

In a letter he wrote to his students while serving in reserve duty for more than a year, Itamar said: “This is the price we reservists pay, time and again. Maybe even every single day. We have families, we have friends — but in the moment of truth, we leave everything and mobilize for the war effort.”

Itamar, a sniper in Lotar, was killed by sniper fire in Jabalia, Gaza, presumably saving other fighters in the process, said his wife.

Now, said Alma Levin Fridman, she is surrounded by fellow Lotar families that hold her with love and support in their hometown.

This week, Levin Fridman said, they marked Itamar’s birthday on the day before Memorial Day, and she thinks about sharing him with the whole country. She feels it’s appropriate, given that he gave his life for the Israel that he loved.

Shamir said Memorial Day is a day of unity for her — when the entire country stops, and all of the fallen are remembered by everyone, not just by her and her family.

“He didn’t fall in vain,” said Shamir, who recently visited Kibbutz Re’im, the Gaza-adjacent community where her husband fought for hours on October 7 and was killed by a terrorist who shot him in the back.

“When I get pictures from residents of Re’im who returned to live there, in the neighborhood where he fought, I think, ‘That’s what he went out to fight for.'”

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