Michael Ossnis: "I Saw With My Own Eyes the Light Emanating From the Temple"

Michael Ossnis was born in the Soviet Union and grew up in a family that knew little about its Jewish roots. "The knowledge I did have came from my grandfather," he notes, "but it wasn't much at all. My only memory was from Passover at my grandfather's, eating matzahs for a week. But after he passed away, I didn't see matzah for eight years until I married my wife and saw that in her home, they ate matzahs on Passover. Beyond that, there were hardly any Jewish symbols in their home either."

Right after their marriage, the couple wanted to immigrate to the Land of Israel, but Michael notes that the Soviet authorities prevented them. "My wife's brother is a military pilot, and I served in Soviet intelligence. This was enough for the authorities to stop us for twenty-five years from leaving the country. Only in 1989 did we finally receive the much-coveted permission."

He remembers the journey to Israel as exhausting. "We didn't have a direct flight, so we had to fly from Moscow to Hungary, stay in a refugee camp run by the Jewish Agency, and only after a few weeks did we arrive in Israel. When we got here, we lived in Kfar Saba until the end of 1995 when I had the most amazing revelation of my life."

Near the largest model on the roof of Aish HaTorah Yeshiva

The Temple from the Heavens

The revelation Michael speaks of concerns the Temple. "It may sound unbelievable, but the Temple just descended from the heavens and entered my consciousness. It's amazing."

What do you mean?

"One day, by chance, I went to Kfar Chabad to consult with an older immigrant who owned a certain business. When I entered his home, I saw his children playing with cards arranged in a semi-circle with drawings on them. The eldest was standing in the middle, lifting a card each time and asking, 'What is this?' Whoever answered correctly first got the points. I approached and recognized drawings of a menorah and other various utensils. Then, I suddenly saw an unfamiliar drawing and felt it was calling to me. I felt that the card was alive. I tried to turn my gaze away, but something inexplicable made me look at it repeatedly. Eventually, I picked up the card, showed it to the children, and asked, 'Guys, what's going on here? What is this card?' They burst out laughing: 'How can you be an adult and not know what the Temple is?'"

Here, Michael pauses his story and emphasizes, "Until that day, I didn't even know what the Temple was. I had never heard the term. So when the children said 'The Temple,' it didn't register in my mind, but I felt my heart start pounding strongly. I tried to ask them what the Temple was, and their father suggested, 'Go buy some books on the subject and start learning.'"

Michael constructing a model

Is that what you did?

"Yes, that's exactly what I did," he says, "I returned home to Kfar Saba, and on the way, I bought several books about the Temple. My heart was pounding all the while. I came home and immediately pounced on the books and started reading and reading... I read about the description of the Temple and the work of the priests. I didn't understand everything, but I was impressed that there was something real here. It ignited me."

A Vivid Dream

During that time, Michael moved with his family to the settlement of Kedumim. "All this time, I felt the need to take an interest in the Jewish history of my people, to understand what really happened. I was then already forty-five years old, but only then did I become exposed to all the events that the Jewish people had gone through over the years."

"At that time, I was looking for a new job," he adds, "but I felt I wanted to use the time to be interested in Judaism and all the exciting revelations I had learned about, so I preferred it to be a job in the settlement. Ultimately, I approached the community security officer and asked if I could work as a guard at the entrance to Kedumim. The security officer told me that they were looking for a guard, and so each day, I found myself in the booth outside. Together with me was a Hebrew book translated into Russian, and I would sit at my post and read. On this occasion, I also met good people from the settlement who would greet me every morning and were an address for all the questions that popped up for me, giving me a significant boost."

A month later, Michael had a dream. "It was a different dream from regular dreams because usually, when we wake up, we forget the dream we had, and even if we remember, it's blurry and incomprehensible. But the dream I dreamed was entirely clear. Even today, twenty-two years later, I sometimes close my eyes and see exactly the same dream."

In the picture, my mosaic at Noam Boys School in Rehovot

What was in the dream?

"In the dream, I saw myself flying in the air, surrounded by complete darkness. I didn't know where I was flying to, but when I looked down, I saw a long, shiny ruler made of metal. When I looked closely, I saw that the lines didn't mark millimeters and centimeters, but years. I looked and saw I was flying to the year 1880, and then I continued to fly back to the years 400 and 500. I kept looking down and saw the darkness clearing up more and more. At this point, I saw that I had passed the line marking the counting, and now I'm three hundred years before the counting, and then I saw before me the Temple standing on its site. Not destroyed, but magnificent, made of marble and Jerusalem stone, with lots of gold. I stopped at the northwestern direction, diagonally positioned, and suddenly I passed through the realization that this is the center of the world. And then I saw that from the windows flowed an enormous light, a light incomparable in the world. I felt this light hitting me and moving me. It brings only good things to the world, peace and happiness to all mankind."

"The light, unlike the way of light, did not blind, but continued to affect and push me, then I got scared and decided I was going back home. Again, I flew over the time ruler, seeing how I reach the year 1995, the actual year. And suddenly, a thought flashes in my mind – I was there and saw the past, so perhaps I'll look forward and see the future too? I tried to exert myself and see, and I saw that above the same horizon spreading in all directions is the light I also saw in the past. The light of the Temple."

"When I woke up in the morning," he continues, "I asked my wife where I was at night, and she told me, 'You were sleeping.' I felt I had experienced something enormous, I was tired as if I hadn’t slept at all. All the muscles in my arms and legs ached as if I had worked all night. For an entire month, I wandered around feeling I had to do something with the things I experienced. But I didn't know who to turn to or what was expected of me."

View of one of the models

The Decision: To Build the Temple

Eventually, Michael turned to speak with the head of the yeshiva in Kedumim. "The head of the yeshiva told me that it was certainly a sign that I should learn and strengthen in the commandments. And that's what I did, but I always felt I wanted to do something specific for the Temple. Then an idea arose in my heart – I decided to build a model of the Temple, exactly as I saw it in my dream."

Do you have any artistic background?

"Not at all, no background in art. I never worked hands-on jobs. However, in the Soviet Union, I earned a degree as a building engineer, so I have the technical knowledge. I remembered the proportions of the Temple from the dream, and that's how I built it on a scale of one to 200. I worked on this model for an entire year. Every day I'd go to work, and when I returned, I'd spend hours building, creating, and making parts."

Michael acquired the raw materials from factories in Petah Tikva. "I didn't have money to buy and invest in original materials."

Tabernacle and High Priest at the entrance

One day, Rabbi Yisrael Ariel from Jerusalem, the director of the Temple Institute, knocked on his door and asked to see the model. "He saw the model, checked it out, and was very impressed," Michael recounts. "He even found that the dimensions were accurate, even though I hadn't studied the Tractate Midot. I did it simply according to what I saw in the dream. In the end, he asked me to prepare another model on a scale of 1 to 100, which means it should be twice as big. Over the next year, I advanced with the new model, and thus I built the most magnificent model that stands today at the Temple Institute. The smaller model is also being used and is displayed at the Beit Rivka Seminary for girls in Kfar Chabad."

Since then, he has also created additional models of the Temple and models of the Tabernacle. "The work isn't easy," he says, "but I believe that just as I turned to Judaism out of love and began studying the Torah out of love, so will I continue working and creating out of love."

In these weeks when the Torah portions of Terumah and Tetzaveh are read, Michael notes that there is so much to learn from what is written in them. "It's simply fascinating; the details are written there very specifically. But it's interesting to see that even though they're so detailed, I meet people who are unaware of all the details. This is because they learn with the intent to learn, but when learning with the intent to build, the things become much clearer and understandable."