NEW YORK — Natan Sharansky, left, knows he’s disturbing the status quo. Days before the most recent meeting of the board of governors of the Jewish Agency for Israel, Sharansky, the board’s relatively new chairman, declared that the Agency’s traditional mission had outlived its usefulness.

“It’s not enough to speak about aliyah,” Sharansky told a delegation of American Jewish leaders. “It’s almost prohibited for the head of the Jewish Agency to say so, but it can’t be our goal [just] to bring more Jewish people [to Israel].”

With these words – and the recent appointment to key positions of people who share his views – Sharansky has signalled his intent to bring about radical change to the financially strapped Jewish Agency, shifting its focus away from Israel and toward strengthening the secular identity of Diaspora Jews.

At the centre of Sharansky’s plan is the notion of peoplehood. He and a tight group of ideological allies – mostly other Russian Jews – believe that the Jewish Agency must now become a global promoter of Jewish identity, particularly among the young.

Peoplehood, according to its proponents, is defined as a sense of connectivity among Jews who share a common history and fate. It is still an amorphous concept for some critics. Others wonder if it is too weak a foundation on which to base educational programs – especially since this vision of peoplehood is not predicated on having any kind of religious or spiritual identity.

Nonetheless, this new role for the Jewish Agency is one that Sharansky, by all accounts, seems to be pursuing with great passion. It also comes out of necessity.

Since the establishment of Israel in 1948, the Jewish Agency has been financed through a combination of Israeli government funds and money from the Diaspora. By now, however, it is clear that money from the Diaspora is drying up.

In 1989, the Jewish Agency received $275 million from the North American federations, but last year it received only $130 million, and the projected intake for 2010 is $110 million.

Given that Diaspora money makes up one-third of the Jewish Agency’s budget, the drop has been catastrophic for the large bureaucracy.

In response to the decline comes Sharansky’s new vision. Though immigration is still a large budget category, this year it will account for barely more than the education department – $100.59 million, as opposed to $94.29 million for education, out of a budget of $321.71 million.

Two recent appointments to high posts in the Jewish Agency are further indication of a change in direction.

A new senior position has been created for Misha Galperin, the current executive vice-president and CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington. He will be based in New York and provisionally will be in charge of what the Jewish Agency is calling “Global Public Affairs and Financial Resource Development.”

Galperin, the most prominent Russian Jew filling a leadership position in the American Jewish organizational world, is one of the main conceptual architects of peoplehood and recently authored a book on the subject.

The Jewish Agency also recently announced that Alan Hoffmann, currently the director general of the Agency’s education department, will become the director general of the entire Agency, elevating someone whose orientation is promoting Jewish education.

Of Hoffmann’s appointment, Galperin said that he knows “I have a partner in Israel who is exactly the kind of person that I was hoping would be my partner on that side.”

With the new positions filled, all that remains is to define exactly what peoplehood is and how a sprawling institution promotes it.

Galperin’s definition of peoplehood is “an extended family with a mission,” and to promote it, we must engender a feeling of belonging, of community. Advocates say that young Jews must be given experiences – such as Jewish summer camp or the Taglit-Birthright Israel program – that allow them to see their connection to other Jews and identify with the Jewish story.

Galperin says that contrary to what most people think about the Jewish Agency, it already is engaged in many projects that could fall under this rubric, including supporting Israel travel programs and maintaining a network of 400 emissaries in the United States involved in some form of Jewish education.

The substance, Galperin says, has yet to be clearly defined. There are certain successful programs that already exist. Others will have to be invented. The key for him, and Sharansky, is that the core mission no longer be immigration.

Galperin also contends that such a move will be good for the financial situation of the Jewish Agency, enabling it to find new sources of funding and to draw more from federations.

Some, however, worry that peoplehood is too vacuous or superficial a concept to be the basis of Jewish identity. Absent the threat of anti-Semitism, the critics say, it is hard to see what will bind Jews as one “global family.”

Others argue that the Jewish faith has done a good job of inspiring a sense of peoplehood, but that the programming envisioned by the Jewish Agency makes no room for religion.

“I think that the Jewish Agency in the end will not succeed in the educational, cultural peoplehood mission unless it is able to make a contribution in the development of Jewish religion,” said Rabbi Irving (Yitz) Greenberg, a prominent modern Orthodox rabbi who was the founding president of the Jewish Life Network, an organization focused on revitalizing American Jewish life through educational and cultural initiatives. “That’s going to be a real challenge.”

But that’s a minor worry compared to the larger concern if the Jewish Agency doesn’t change.

“I think the logic is overwhelming and inescapable, and it’s probably the last chance,” Greenberg said. “If this doesn’t work, then the Agency will die.”

North American leaders praise Sharanksky’s plan