When Michael Friedman would visit his grandparents’ shul in upstate New York as a child he heard music that he would never forget. “They were beautiful tunes what I thought were American tunes because I never heard them anywhere else ” says the Jerusalem-based yungerman who grew up in Ramot. “When I got older I happened to fall into a yekkish shul in Bnei Brak and suddenly I heard it — there was the Kaddish I was looking for the Ein K’Elokeinu.” Rabbi Friedman so enjoyed the davening he would “pop over there” whenever the opportunity arose. Years later in 2000 Rabbi Friedman heard that a yekkish shul — K’hal Adas Yeshurun Jerusalem (KAYJ) — was starting up in Ramot. He ended up helping manage the kehillah arranging the minyanim and serving as the gabbai. “The first Shabbos I sent someone up to the amud ” he says. “But you know when you know a melody and you hear it done wrong and it bothers you? The second Shabbos same thing. As the weeks passed and the shul grew they told me ‘You just be the chazzan.’ ”