Rabbi Vernon H. Kurtz

Dear Friends,

You are receiving MERCAZ USA news in a new form. We hope that you will enjoy our electronic newsletter and we look forward to your comments.

Since our last quarterly newsletter, we have been very busy on a number of fronts. We continue to work to gain more members for MERCAZ USA. Membership is the lifeblood of our activities and provides the financial strength that MERCAZ needs in order to do its job adequately in the United States and in Israel. Our Membership Committee has established several new initiatives, and we are following up on their good work and ideas.

I am very pleased to report the historic decision of the Rabbinical Assembly to add MERCAZ as a voluntary check-off item on its annual organizational bill. In the last few months, we have had several meetings with USCJ Regional Boards in order to secure help in promoting check-off, and this fall there will be a special MERCAZ membership insert in the United Synagogue Review. We see this insert to be part of a major effort to reach out to every Conservative Jewish household and appeal directly for membership. We encourage you to make sure that your friends and fellow congregants follow through on this effort and use the insert to become members of MERCAZ.

We continue our work of promoting Zionism and Israel within the Conservative Movement. I had the privilege of speaking at the Federation of Jewish Men's Clubs Biennial Convention in Ft. Lauderdale; we held a very successful Yom Iyun, a day of study on Zionism in the Conservative Movement (which you can read about in the newsletter); we continue to promote tourism to Israel through the Conservative Movement's Israel Travel Project, working together with the Israel Ministry of Tourism; and our Officers and Executive Committee members are busy in promoting the MERCAZ agenda in their own communities. We encourage you to get involved with them in making MERCAZ an important agenda item in your Congregation and in your community.

As we come to the end of the Jewish year, I extend my personal wishes, as well as those of our officers and directors, for a Healthy and Happy New Year to you and your families. May it be a year of peace and security for the State of Israel and for the entire world!

With best wishes,

RABBI VERNON KURTZ