Abstract
Between the founding of the American Council for Judaism in 1942 and the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, the organization's character, mission, and membership base transformed around the axis of competing "pro-Reform" and "anti-Zionist" visions. The Council was established by a cohort of leading Reform rabbis in response to the growth of Zionism in the Reform movement, but in reality, most sought to reinvigorate their declining movement through reviving the ideology of classical Reform. As the Council shifted from concept to implementation, it was overtaken by leaders who prioritized the battle against the Zionist movement over outreach to the laity, and over the course of 1942 and 1943, the great majority of its founders withdrew from the anti-Zionist organization. This study is an attempt to unpack the discourse of the Council's foundation and comprehend the forces that impacted the Council's evolution. I have endeavored to peel back the layers—the founders' motives for establishing the Council, the close relationships they shared, the string of resignations that began shortly after its founding, and the anti-Zionist ideology espoused by the Council's leadership—to better understand the marginalization of the Council in American Jewish life. Furthermore, the Council presents a powerful case study which can help us better comprehend the nature of a struggling organization seeking to find its purpose and the best way to fulfill its mission, and the intellectual roots of the discourse that embodied that debate. In the end, as will be shown, what at first appears to be a unified opposition to Zionism was undermined by deep-seated disagreements over the nature of Zionism, Judaism, and Jewish history.