Hello!  For those of you who are new to CYPMinyan, welcome!  This site has been a labor of love that I've been working on with the help of Presentense staff and interns in Jerusalem for the past couple days.  For those of you that don't know, CYPMinyan has been chosen by Presentense, an organization that enables young Jews to develop new business ventures, as a project worthy of investing in.  I am in Israel for the summer, studying at the Presentense Institute, and attempting to glean as much entrepreneurial knowledge as I can from my peers (there are 17 of us working on 17 very exciting new Jewish ventures around the world at the Institute) and from the staff.

So far, being in Jerusalem has been wonderful.  I had the opportunity to attend Friday night services at Shira Chadasha, one of the first independent Minyanim in Israel, located in the German Colony.  The service was very nice.  They have a mechitza (a separation of men and women), but there was a woman who led Kabbalat Shabbat on the women’s side of the mechitza, and a man who led Maariv from the men’s side.  It’s very interesting to me as I read and get the opportunity to attend more of these congregations, how each interprets Jewish Halacha differently.  I look forward to making contact with the founders of Shira Chadasha to pick their brains a little bit and to help gain an understanding of the different issues they had to confront to grow their congregation into what it is today (a very popular minyan for English speakers in Jerusalem).  It’s been a very exciting environment to be a part of so far.