This summer, in the upscale Jerusalem neighborhood of Rehavia, an assortment of 30 or so activists, artists and entrepreneurs are spending all their waking hours huddled over laptops, listening to visiting speakers and documenting it all on various blogs, while sleeping sometimes five to a room. They have come together for what participant Esther Kustanowitz, a writer from New York, jokingly describes as a "Zionist sweatshop."

The crew of young Jews from countries like the United States, Panama and Holland have gathered for two months at the PresenTense Institute for Creative Zionism (PICZ), a grassroots think tank whose aim is to unite the political and the practical by nurturing activists, artists and entrepreneurs in creating vital, self-sustaining Jewish programs, all in an environment that with its diverse cast of characters living in close quarters could be described as the "Real World Jerusalem." Cross-pollination is encouraged.

The project is the brainchild of an American Jewish odd couple whose hope is to take their youthful, idealistic Zionism and transform it into something practical.

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Ariel Beery and Aharon Horwitz, both 27, joined the IDF in 1999 as teenagers after lives spent as leaders in their respective Zionist youth movements in the U.S. Both men had love affairs with Israel since their boyhoods in the States and now, post-aliyah, are looking to bridge the idealism of their youth with the practical challenges facing young Jews in Israel and abroad working to combine social justice, entrepreneurship and Jewish ideology.

According to their mission statement, PICZ, a summer program running from June 18 to July 31, does not exclusively focus on Israel-based projects, but sees the next phase of Zionism as something more global. They write: "The creativity of the Jewish People is brought to its full potential by our unity and our resolve to continue improving the world through improving our place in it."

PICZ funds itself through consulting gigs for organizations like ROI120, a global network of young Jewish leaders, and the World Zionist Organization, helping these groups tap into what matters to young Jews today.

Beery, the ponytailed, bespectacled child of Israelis who live in New York, was national president of Hashomer Hatzair (the same socialist Zionist youth movement his grandparents belonged to in Poland), and spent his childhood reading bedtime stories his father wrote that had him joining the Israeli social justice programs and venturing off to save the world. Beery initially came to Israel to be a peace activist in the West Bank working with the Palestinian youth groups.

Horwitz, by contrast, formed far less dovish sensibilities as national president of the Jabotinsky-based Zionist youth movement Betar while growing up in Cleveland, Ohio. At 14, he threatened to call a sit-in at the local Jewish community center if the local Jewish Federation wrote a letter demanding the release of Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard. Other times he trolled the town with Betar friends to "go find skinheads to fight," Horwitz, tall with a mop of dark curls, recalls with a sheepish grin. "It's pretty ridiculous looking back on it now."

Both moved to Israel out of high school, joined the army and were assigned to the Nahal Brigades. True to his background, Beery was assigned to Battalion 50, which focused on kibbutzim. Horwitz, in the context of his yeshiva study, was placed in Battalion 931.

Despite their parallel paths, the two did not meet until they were back in the U.S. after the army. They finally met at Columbia University in New York, where they were both doing their undergraduate work. While enrolled in the same course on nationalism - Beery sitting in the front of the classroom, crossing his legs to the left, Horwitz at the back, legs crossed to the right - they discovered a shared passion for pro-Israel activism which led to a fast friendship.

Response unbecoming

The bond was cemented in 2004 when the two collaborated on the film "Columbia Unbecoming," which documented the anti-Israel sentiments of some faculty members in the school's Middle East language department. One such particularly egregious example cited by Horwitz is professor Joseph Massad allegedly asking an Israeli student in class how many Palestinians he had killed.

The reaction to the 25-minute film, which debuted in the fall of 2004, was immediate and impassioned, according to Horwitz. "The campus literally went insane." The film sparked protests on multiple fronts, from the school's Jewish alumni to proponents of free speech on campus.

The fallout hit both men hard. "I lost my faith in the Jewish media," recalls Beery, who is currently completing his graduate degree at New York University in non-profit management and Judaic Studies. He plans to return full-time to Israel by the end of the year. "[The media] doesn't sufficiently address the concerns of Jewish youth. I'm interested in the experience of being a young Jew."

That interest led to the creation of a magazine in 2006 called "PresenTense." PICZ is, according to Beery, "the economic platform and hands-on manifestation of the activism inspired by the issues raised in the magazine." The group works with a number of organizations to help expand their reach, including the Los Angeles-based "Challah for Hunger," a Boston-based program that trains young Jewish American leaders to transition into Israeli leadership positions post-aliyah, and a for-profit online networking database for Jewish activists around the globe.

For Horwitz, who currently lives with his wife in the Bakka-Talpiot neighborhood of Jerusalem, and is CEO of an Internet start-up company called MavenHaven.com, PICZ also represents the next step in the evolution of his identity as an Israeli. "It's my Zionism 2.0," he said. "Now that I live here as an adult, and see what it means to create a real life for yourself here, I want to do that and still maintain my ideals."