The Jewish Agency plans to offer early retirement to dozens of employees as it prepares for what has been dubbed the largest restructuring in its history.

The agency, the largest Jewish organisation in the world, confirmed it will offer retirement packages to around 70 of its 800 Israel-based employees who have at least two decades of service.

The reduction in personnel, the largest since the agency was established in 1929, comes as chairman Isaac Herzog considers a wide-ranging overhaul that insiders said could result in a radical change in its focus and a possible new mission statement.

But Mr Herzog denied reports that Aliyah — the immigration of diaspora Jews to Israel — would become a lesser priority.

“Aliyah has always been and is and will be a central issue for the Jewish Agency,” he told the JC.

“We are focusing on the most urgent matter of bridging the Israel-diaspora divide and keeping the Jewish people connected — with Israel always at heart.”

Insiders at the organisation confirmed that a “rethinking” process was underway, but one source said: “it’s way too early to say anything, as the process is only making its first steps.”

Over the last decade the Jewish Agency has gradually shifted its core mission away from encouraging and facilitating aliyah — the immigration of diaspora Jews to Israel.

Former chairman Zeev Bielsky once said the agency should be much more focused on Jewish education and identity in the diaspora.

Mr Herzog told the JC last year that there was a “massive gap that is widening” between Israel and diaspora Jewry.

“Roughly speaking, there isn’t much similarity between the communities of Jerusalem and Babylon,” he said, using the term in rabbinical literature often used to refer to the Jewish diaspora.

“The one in Jerusalem lives a mainly irreligious life, but practices Orthodoxy. The one in Babylon is mainly Reform or Conservative in its practice and lives a life which is not necessarily connected to a Jewish environment.”

Rising costs of running the Jewish Agency and a fall in donations are likely to be a factor in the reorganisation.

The Jewish Federation of North America, its single largest donor, has reduced its annual allocations to the Agency dramatically in recent years, Haaretz reported.