War diary 2023

day 23

 

dear friends and Sanga

today we mark day 23 of fighting against Hamas.

i see a lot of hate raising up in the world against the Jews. this is very very dangerous for us Jews because THIS has happened before and it ended really bad for us... what resulted from it is our country. the land of the Jewish people. 

there is a lot of talk out there in the media, in the world on how we "took" this land from the right owners of this land, the "Palestinians"

but this is not true in any sense. you should all read up on your history.

let me just put it here for you so there is no mistake in my writing. 

The Canaanite period 3,300-1,000 BC

The Israelite period 1000 BC – 586 BC

The Persian period 586 BC -332 BC

The Hellenistic period 332 BC -176 BC

Hasmonean Dynasty 167 BCE – 63 BCE

The Roman Empire 63 BCE – 324

The Byzantine period 324-638

The Arab Caliphate period 638-1099

The Crusaders 1099-1291

The Mamluk period 1291-1517

The Ottoman Empire 1517-1917

British Mandate 1917-1948

 

when we look at the map of this land from the time of the 12 tribes we see (where Gaza is now) a place that had Philistines live in. the Philistines were tall red haired man that came from Europe and you can read about their history by typing Philistines in Google.

when the Roman Empire ruled here, they called this land Palestine to ridicule the Hebrews. to joke on their name... to laugh at the Jewish people who lived here. 

this name stuck. but this land was never ever called Palestine. it was a Roman Joke to look down on the Jews. 

learn your history people...

 my Kibbutz, where i was born and where i live now was established in 1939, ten years before the deceleration of independence.

we lived with the Arabs who were all around in their villages and we were all friends, all sharing this land together, no hate, no terrorism, no violence at all. 

in 1939 when we wanted to erect a Jewish Kibbutz on this land we bought it from the Arab owners, just like normal human beings do everywhere else in the world...

this land was not stolen from anyone. it was bought with good money.

maybe they now (the Arabs) feel that it was a bad deal? i don't know anymore... they just hate.

once the UN gave its blessing back in 1949 to make this country "Israel" we got attacked by all the armies of the neighboring countries. we won the fight.

then we were hit once more back in 1967, we won again.

next was the Yom Kippur war in 1973. we won again.

in this war, we concurred a lot of land and took it from the Egyptians. Gaza came with that concurred land...

when we gave it back to the Egyptians in 1982 they did not want Gaza back!

they told us: "you took them? now they are yours. we do not want them back"

smart Egyptians....

you see?

do you understand what is going on?

do you know what flag Palestine had back in 1938? not what you think.... you are thinking about the flag you know now, but this land back in 1938 had Jews and Arabs living here peacefully... 

this is the flag:

 so you see, all this noise out there in the world of "free Palestine" is absolutely nonsense! 

who told you that we took it by force? that we are conquerors of the Arab people? of the Palestines? this is all wrong...

the craziest thing is that today you hear a lot and you think you know what is going on, but you do not. you do not live here, you are not neighbor of these people... 

when we gave Sinai back in 1982 to Egypt, we got Gaza as a gift, but we wanted to help them... we gave them electricity, water, hospitals, schools and so on... we did our very best to give them what they can use to grow as a people... but they did nothing with it. they just hate.

what can you do with such neighbors? what would you do?

in 2004 we took out ALL Jewish settlements in Gaza and took out all the army. we gave it back to them so they can own it fully without our Jewish interference...

so what did they do? they destroyed everything we left them. houses, apartment buildings, parks, beach, everything they destroyed.. why? because they are Arabs.... that is why.

what ever you give them, is no good.

nothing is good for them... why? who knows....

so you see, what you are being told out there, that we are killing the innocent, that we kill civilians, this is all lies. 

yes, civilians die in this fight, but that is ONLY because of Hamas. 

Hamas uses civilians as human shields. it makes us look like murderers but the actual truth is that they are the murderous ones. they will kill their own just to make us look bad.

it worked for them for many many years and we got a name of baby killers...

but, this time, we do not care anymore. we are going to destroy this evil from the face of the planet (you are welcome) and change our modus operandi on how we look at our neighbors.

once i thought that there can be peace with them.

i was wrong.

not because that peace can not be achieved, it can! just not with them. 

they do not want peace. they want all Jews dead.

what you hear now in the streets.... kill all Jews...

we, as a people who are always being targeted took a step forward and invented a HUGE amount of weaponry that now will be used if needed to destroy our enemy. you have always heard rumours about our special weapons... you might get a glimpse of what they do if any one, i mean ANYONE tries to wipe us out.. we will fire back and destroy you. this is what we  learned from our history. we need bigger guns than our enemy.

we have them now.

do not try us...

so, we come to a stand off now.

who has the bigger gun...

we do.

hope we never use it.

 

stay tuned for more

 

War diary 2023

 

War diary

Day 21

 

I wish to use this platform to share with you all out there what is happening here. Not in a military plan and such, but what is happening on the ground in Israel. What is happening in my home, my Kibbutz, my heart.

 

I must first take you to ground zero. Day 1.

It was a Saturday, a Holy Saturday for the Jewish folk.

The date was October 7^th and I woke up from a dream that shook me quite hard.

In my dream I was lying in the bushes, hiding, holding a machine gun with a special army scope. I watched as figures entered my scope, they moved silently… one after the other, they all carried massive weapons on them…

I took a deep breath, in total silence, breathed it out, stopped for a split second and fired my rifle.

I woke up.

This is not a typical dream.

Opened my phone and realized what is going on.

Thousands of terrorists armed to the teeth entered into Israel and started to massacre the innocent civilians. They killed everyone they met.

Since I am a fan of the free press, I started to see videos come out of there from the phones of the terrorists who were so proud of their success, they just went mad. Like beasts of men. Like animals… they went on a murdering rampage. From door to door, from house to house, killing everyone.

I saw the videos of them shooting babies in the head while in their bed, I saw them shooting old folks, young parents and their young ones, throwing grandees into rooms where people were hiding, saw them beheading, saw them kill in ways I did not know possible… saw them burn people alive, burn children alive… burning babies alive…

The things they did are the most horrific I have ever seen with my own eyes.

They raped, they murdered, they even raped dead bodies. All filmed, all for everyone to see.

Many were taken prisoners, alive or dead, many taken…. Some 230 civilians taken to Gaza.

There was a peace festival of thousands of young man and woman dancing to music in the name of peace and love. They killed most of them. They surrounded them, shot them, fired rockets at them, RPG fire, grenades and more. They beheaded them too, leaving many heads next to bodies, and then burn them. The ones who escaped managed to get shot while running away. Some hid in small shelters, they through grenades inside and then opened fire inside… all filmed. All for you to see.

Raped the women in the party, and then burn them.

There are many survival stories too from the ones who were buried deep under the dead bodies when the grenades came in and the fire started from the machine guns…  many injured but survived. Many many many dead. So many dead…

They managed to murder 1400 in a few hours and kidnap about 300. Some died on the way to Gaza and were thrown to the side of the road only to be recovered about a week and a half later.

There are now 300+ bodies in our refrigerators that cannot be recognized in any way.

This should give you an idea of how bad this day was. And this is only the tip of the iceberg.

There was a lot of chaos that day. One day, we will try and figure out what happened to us. How did we miss this? Why did it take us hours to get the army mobilized? Many questions left unanswered…

And then we collected ourselves and went to war.

Many Israelis who heard about the killings got in their car and drove there to save as many as they can. Their heroic stories will come out in time but I got to hear a lot of them and it is beyond what you can imagine. They went in, under heavy fire and rescued so many people who were hiding in bushes along side of the road, they saved many… as many as they could.

A lot of them died in the heavy fire fight. They saved and got killed. So so many…

This was day 1.

Ground zero.

Israel's 9/11

Our most horrible terror attack.

We are now in our darkest hour.

Back to the Nazi game.

 

Israel, a very small country in size knows one thing. To unite under attack.

This is what Jews know how to do. Unite under danger.

Strange people. When there is peace, we want to kill each other but when they are being killed by the "others" they unite like they were brothers all along. Very strange people.

That is what happens when you are being killed and persecuted for 4000 years. You learn to unite under danger of extinction.

We are now united. We are now fighting back.

 

Out there, In the normal world, you might find it hard to understand. You might feel the urge to point out what we do with a blaming finger pointed at us, but that only means you do not understand our enemy.

These are the lowest form of men there is. They are only filled with hate. The kind of hate you have never ever encountered in your lives. The kind of hate that would take a pregnant woman, cut her belly open, take out the baby while both are still alive, burn the baby still attached to the mother then burn them both, alive.

The kind of hate that makes you take a young couple with their children, tie the children together in front of the parents, take out the eye of the dad, cut off the breast of the mom in front of the children, cut off the foot of the young girl, cut off the fingers of the young boy, shoot them (not sure who first and who second) and then burn them all.

This is evil you have never seen.

This is hard to the max. I have seen it all with my own eyes. Heard the screams. Saw all this blood… so much blood…

Day 1 was the worst we have ever seen as a people since the Nazis. It was a very very loud wake up call to who are our neighbors. We will now make sure they will never ever be our neighbors again.

The south now is at war. The whole part of the country is a war zone, a military closed area so they could not even bury their dead. We had to bury them all in different places in Israel.

Being the undertaker of our community for the past 12 years we were called to bury some of our dead here in my Kibbutz. A 80 year old grandma and her 12 year old niece. Both taken prisoners but were shot dead after they crossed into Gaza. Found 12 days later.

 

Now we are 21 days into the war, there is so much to say but for today I think we can end things here.

Try and think what would have happened on 9/11 in the US if 37,000 civilians were killed by a hoard of terrorist who came into the country, shot civilians dead, burned them alive, dismembered, beheaded…. How would that hit you? How would you deal with that?

And, to make all things so much worst, they hide behind their own civilians! Who are these cowards? Our enemy.
The ones who want to kill us all, just because we are Jews.

Israel is defending it self from the worst of all enemy we have ever seen.

We will win or everyone will be dead.

 

Stay tuned for more to come

One of a kind artwork masterpiece

From time to time we get requests to craft something new! Something that we have not done yet!

Here for your consideration is one prayer wheel that answers this statement.

It was made in our custom signature 2.0 version design where only the drum rotates and the caps are stationery. This design came up in my mind a few years ago when I challenged myself to craft something new and artistic for our prayer wheels.

Think about it, prayer wheels have been made in the same design for about 2600 years…. I thought that it was time to craft something new! Ha!

And after a few attempts this design came to life!

A few months ago, a customer reached out to us asking for this design of a prayer wheel, but he wanted to have it painted in black acrylic. This we have never done before! But why not?

He wanted a golden Hung on the top cap and the liberation by seeing mantra on the drum.

Inside of this masterpiece of a prayer wheel are 50 million Mani mantras.

 

 and of course you can see it spinning here:

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/ogOlnkdxIbI

I wanted to share this with you all because one does not know how much more time one has on this earth in this body and it is better to let you know than to keep it to myself!

I love you all, you all have made a prayer wheel maker out of me, an artist… things I never thought I will say about myself. Rinpoche and Karma pushed me to a point I did not know existed and placed me in the spot of one who crafts and delivers fine art custom hand made masterpieces to all who desire a prayer wheel, but not just one machine made for tourists, but rather a masterpiece of fine art! What an honor it is to be able to provide this service to you all out there!

Thank you all for making it possible

Thank you Rinpoche for pointing us in this direction

Thank you Karma for appearing in all your splendor

Thank you Ayelet for being my partner in love in this lifetime and pushing me forward to create masterpieces of fine art with you

 

I love you all

ביקורו של אריק פמה קונסנג 2022

 

אריק פמה קונסנג - מתרגם, מתרגל ומורה לדהרמה במסורת הטיבטית - מגיע לראשונה לביקור בישראל.

במסגרת ביקורו של אריק יתקיימו שתי סדנאות והרצאת ערב בהרצליה ובכרמל, בין התאריכים 24-28 בנובמבר.

להרשמה>>

מדיטציה לצורך הארה

הרצאה פתוחה למתעניינים ולמתרגלים על מדיטציה במסורת הבודהיסטית.

 

יום חמישי 24.11.22

19:00-20:30

מדיטיישן פקטורי, הרצליה

לראות את המציאות מבעד לתרבות

מפגש סוף-שבוע למתעניינים ומתרגלים, אשר יתמקד באיכויות המהותיות של הבודהיזם, וכיצד לזהות אותן ולמצוא את הרלוונטיות שלהן למרות הבדלי התרבות בין סביבתנו לבין הסביבה בה נוצרה והתפתחה דרכו של הבודהה.

 

25-26.11.2022

שישי 15:00 עד 18:00

שבת 10:00 עד 18:00

מדיטיישן פקטורי, הרצליה

השתתפות מלאה בלבד - יש להגיע לכל משך הסדנה

התוכנית משלבת לימוד ותרגול מדיטציה

הבודהה של החמלה הגדולה: תרגול סדהנה והמרחב הפתוח של האהבה

סדנה זו תתבסס על צורת תרגול בודהיסטית מסורתית: סדהנה (מערך תרגול מונחה הכולל ויזואליזציה), אשר תתמקד בדמותו של הבודהה צ'נרזיג, המגלם את איכויות החמלה והאהבה. המפגש מיועד למתרגלי וג'ריאנה או אלה המתעניינים בצורת תרגול זו. אין צורך בהעצמה טנטרית לתרגול זה. 

 

ראשון-שני, 27-28.11.2022

ימים ראשון ושני, 10:00-18:00
בית הדהרמה על הר הכרמל ,עספיא (ליד חיפה)

 

השתתפות מלאה בלבד - יש להגיע לכל משך הסדנה

התוכנית משלבת לימוד ותרגול מדיטציה

להרשמה>>

less orders, more time to craft prayer wheels for the shop!

 Dear friends and Sanga,

this month has been a slower one in incoming orders (who knows why) so this is the first time in a long long time that i have spare free time to craft prayer wheels for the shop so customers can just click and buy them instead of ordering them and waiting for them to be crafted.

this opportunity gives us both (me and Ayelet) the creative time we need to craft amazing one of a kind special prayer wheels that we wanted to craft for a long long time, opening up an all new "special series" prayer wheels that are a work of art as well as being a holy tool for liberation and Karma cleaning.

i wish to thank you all for being the most amazing customers in this whole world, giving us a chance to do what we love most and make a small living off of it to support our life and practice.

thank you so much and keep checking in to our shop to see what we have made! hope you like it!

Micha & Ayelet

 

no more Swarovski crystals on top

 dear friends and Sanga,

the Covid-19 has done much damage to businesses all over the world in the past years since its arrival on our planet. one of those businesses that got hit badly was the Swarovski company. they closed down some lines and factories and that resulted in many people being fired from their jobs... and for us it meant that we no longer can order these crystals we use to put on top of our classic design prayer wheels....

we had some left from our previous order from them, but that supply is running out...

also, we got advice from H.E. Garchen Rinpoche not to use them anymore since practitioners sometime drop their prayer wheel, having the crystal brake and then not use their prayer wheel anymore and that is not good... 

so, for both those reasons (mainly Rinpoche's advice) we will no longer offer these crystals on top of our classic design wheels and only offer it as a counterbalance for those who want it :-)

with crystal on top

 

i think this is good because when we first started to craft prayer wheels, we got a look at Rinpoche's wheel at the time and it had a crystal on top and that made us make such prayer wheels... Rinpoche gave his prayer wheel (that specific one) to Sogyal Rinpoche and changed his to a one with no crystal on top, but we already started to craft this design with the crystal on top and customers all over the world wanted them on their prayer wheels...

no crystal on top

 

now, this era is coming to an end after thousands of prayer wheels have been made, so if you have one of them, you are lucky and fortunate (in more than one way!) 

enjoy your prayer wheels and keep spinning them for the benefit of all beings!

may all be free of suffering and the causes of suffering, and may all have happiness and the causes for happiness!

love y'all

Micha & Ayelet

levitating electromagnetic tabletop prayer wheel number 4

 

from time to time we get to do something absolutely unbelievable with our hands....

this here is one of those things!

it is a levitating electromagnetic tabletop prayer wheel!

although the space inside this prayer wheel is not very large due to the technicalities of crafting it, we still manage to place a microfilm roll of mantras inside of it. 

usually, this type of microfilm roll can hold about 20 million Mani mantras, but in this case the customer requested 3 different mantras so we had to split it into 3.

this amazing prayer wheel has inside of it 5 million Mani mantras, 1.5 million Medicine Buddha mantras and 250,000 White Tara mantras printed on microfilm.

the base is made from Walnut hardwood and the spinning prayer wheel is made from Maple hardwood and a Walnut top.

it has a beautiful lotus pyrographed on it by Ayelet.

i just love these levitating prayer wheels! there is something so magical about them... the fact that it is floating in space... just blows your mind!

this one is the 4th we have made so far and i want to make some more in the future, but i want  to change something in its design.

since the height it levitates off the base is reduced by weight, in this example the Maple hardwood is very heavy, i wish to switch things around next time...

to make the base from Maple hardwood and the spinning prayer wheel from African Walnut which is a very textured wood but light in weight... this will give the prayer wheel a better height off the base and will look even more amazing! 

African Walnut is beautiful on its own and no artwork is needed on it... actually, since the base will be made from Maple, maybe i will ask Ayelet to do some crazy artwork on the base!

we shell see....

this particular prayer wheel was ordered as a gift to a Tibetan master living in California by one of his students, hope he loves it!

thank you all for tuning in

Micha

fantastic news! and silly me, forgot to tell ya'll

 

 

so, it has been pointed out to me that my last post (a year ago) said that we are closing shop.... 

well, the day that post came out, we got bombarded with prayer wheel orders!

a few weeks later i got a job in the factory here in our community and i worked there every day for 4 hours, in the position of the assistant manager of the CNC dept, producing fantastic products for John Deere, Ford, Chevrolet, GMC, Tesla and many more... so, i got some income coming  in and i still had time to craft in the studio.... but, karma being karma, soon enough there were so many prayer wheel orders i could not keep the factory job! 

so, after about 8 months working there i had to quit that and say millions of thank you's to the factory CEO for allowing me this opportunity!

you know, in this crazy world i live in so many digital realities it is hard to remember to keep them all up dated... this blog is one of many platforms so i am truly sorry if i messed up someone's mind thinking we were not making prayer wheels any more....

we are!

 

but also not for long.... something else came up and we might be closing shop.

but that is for another post, when things become clearer... no point i messing with your minds again!

till then (be it when it may) we are taking orders and still making amazing and beautiful prayer wheels to share with the world who needs it now more than ever... 

crazy crazy times we live in

 

love y'all so much!!

Micha Strauss

sad but true

 this post might be sad for some, but truth is what it is and not what we "think" it is.

for the longest time we have been getting less and less orders for our prayer wheels.and at some point i started asking my self, what is going on?

i have come to realize that Google have changed their rules of engagement and our site is now raked 54 in the search.. that means that no one is seeing our website any more in search for prayer wheels...

why is this happening? no clue... we did nothing wrong.... 

but, Karma is Karma and there is nothing to be done in that sense... just accept this and move on :)

we have been trying for the past 3 months to move our website up the ranks, but with no luck. 

so my friends, since we still need to eat and have a home, we must now both look for work in the 9 to 17 world so we can pay our bills...

thank you so much for all you have done for us in the past and for all your loving kindness!!! 

we feel so grateful to have been able to provide this service to all of you out there in the world and we hope that you will enjoy our prayer wheels (if you were lucky enough to own one)

till now we have made 2043 prayer wheels and that is SO much more then we have ever expected!

we still hope that we would be able to provide this service to the world in the future, but for now we need to look for work...

we love you all! 

Micha & Ayelet