RELIGION : Israel’s <i> Enfant Terrible </i> Calls for Nation to Take Lead Role Among World Jewry

Heresy it may have seemed, but Israel’s deputy foreign minister was serious in his suggestion that world Jewry now needs Israel far more than the Jewish state needs the Diaspora that has supported it so loyally for so long.

Yossi Beilin, who relishes his role as the government’s enfant terrible , daring to question the most hallowed political traditions, was not arguing that Israelis and the Jewish Diaspora should go their separate ways, as some American Jewish leaders fear is already happening.

Beilin rather was proposing that Israel and the Diaspora rework their complex relationship against the backdrop of Israel’s increased political, economic and military strength and the threat of assimilation faced by Jewish communities around the world.

But the “Beilin bombshell,” as the Israeli press described it, brings to the fore profound questions about Jewish identity, the future of Judaism and the character of Israel as a Jewish state.

With its 4.2 million Jews strengthened by immigration from Russia, Israel has become “the one center of the Jewish people,” Beilin told a gathering here of top Jewish leaders from around the world. He was clearly implying that even the 5.5 million American Jews should look to Jerusalem for direction.

“Beilin sees Israel as the big brother, the patron, the tutor, the protector, the savior of all Jews,” said an American Jewish leader attending a meeting of the Zionist General Assembly here this week. “He sees Israel as the stronger partner now, and he wants a reversal of roles.”

David Kahn, the new president of the American Jewish Congress, was even more shocked this week when, speaking to legal officers in the Israeli armed forces, he was bluntly told that Israelis see themselves primarily as Israelis and do not feel they have much in common with American Jews.

“Have we diverged that much?” Kahn said later. “Israelis seem to be telling us, ‘Look to your own problems, and we will look to ours.’ I am not sure what our relationship will be in the future.”

The essence of Beilin’s plan is for Israel to repay the support it has received from the Diaspora by serving as the focus of Jewish identity, saving Jews from assimilation. A key program would bring to Israel on educational visits of a month or more as many as two-thirds of the 80,000 Jewish teen-agers who turn 17 each year around the world.

Beilin urged the dissolution of two venerable institutions, the World Zionist Organization and the Jewish Agency, which have marshaled support for Israel and brought it immigrants since long before the state was established.

He underscored the serious nature of the changes he is proposing with the declaration that world Jewry should halt its fund-raising for Israel--and should stop using Israel to raise funds for its own needs.

“It (is) impossible to continue to base Israel-Diaspora relations primarily on charity,” Beilin said. “Neither can we any longer base fund-raising appeals by the central communal institutions in the Diaspora on the imminent, perhaps mortal threat to Israel’s security or economic or social viability, which have been the primary emotional bases of those appeals.”

Beilin proposed a new organization, Beit Yisrael (House of Israel), to shape the dialogue, assume responsibility for Jewish education in the Diaspora and support immigration to Israel. And Israel Bonds, another venerable institution, should be converted into “a worldwide mutual fund for entrepreneurial investment” in Israel, he added.

The reaction has been furious.

Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin disowned Beilin, saying his proposal was not government thinking, that the Jewish Agency might need “a new agenda” but should remain intact and that Israel certainly needed continued assistance from the Diaspora.

Yehiel Leket, acting chairman of the Jewish Agency, accused Beilin of endangering the $3 billion Israel receives in military and economic assistance from the United States each year and the $500 million that American Jews raise for it annually.