The rabbis of Reform Judaism had opposed Zionism prior to World War I, supporting freedom, democracy and equal rights for Jews in the countries where they lived.

In 1942, a split within the Reform movement occurred due to the passage of a resolution by some rabbis endorsing the raising of a "Jewish Army" in Palestine to fight alongside the Allies of World War II.

The ACJ was founded in June 1942 by a group of leading Reform rabbis including six former presidents of the Central Conference of American Rabbis and the president of the Hebrew Union College, as well as laymen, who opposed the creation of a religiously segregated Jewish Army to fight alongside the Allies and the new political direction of some in their movement, including, but not limited to, on the issue of Zionism as redefined by the Biltmore Program in May 1942.

[4] The leading rabbis included Louis Wolsey, Morris Lazaron, Abraham Cronbach, David Philipson, and Henry Cohen but their most vocal representative for a time became Elmer Berger, who became the council's Executive Director.

It also declared that "Jewish nationalism tends to confuse our fellowmen about our place and function in society and diverts our own attention from our historic role to live as a religious community wherever we may dwell."

It can come in Palestine only when the pretensions to Jewish Statehood are abandoned and we seek instead freedom of migration opportunity based on incontestable rights and not on special privilege.

[8] The presidency of the ACJ was accepted by the well-known philanthropist Lessing J. Rosenwald, who took the lead in urging the creation of a unitary democratic state in Mandatory Palestine in American policy-making circles.

[11] It also opposed the Haganah's Aliyah Bet program, which attempted to bring Jewish refugees into Palestine illegally past a British blockade.

Following a statement by the vice-president of the Zionist Organization of America that American Jews were prepared to spend millions of dollars to finance illegal immigration to Palestine, Rosenwald repudiated him, calling Aliyah Bet a "shocking disregard for law and order" and stating "lawlessness even in the name of mercy cannot be tolerated.

[19] Murray Polner, a historian of Judaism in the United States, wrote that "by 1948, with the establishment of an independent Israel, the council had earned the enmity of the vast majority of American Jewry, who viewed the group as indifferent, if not hostile, to Jews who had lived through the Holocaust and had nowhere to go.

In addition to supporting a network of religious schools committed to Classical Reform Judaism, the Council fought American-Jewish fundraising for Israel and agitated against the merging of Zionist fund-raising organizations with local Jewish community boards, provided financial aid to Jews emigrating from Israel and to Palestinian refugees, and enjoyed friendly relations with the Eisenhower State Department under John Foster Dulles.

The ACJ also vocally supported the efforts of William Fulbright to have the lobbyists for Israel in the United States legally registered as foreign agents.

[20] In 1968, Norton Mezvinksy stepped down as executive director of the ACJ and accused the organization of lacking empathy for Mizrahi Jews, as well as anti-Black racism.

[22] Jewish intellectuals who at one time or another passed through the Council included David Riesman, Hans Kohn, Erich Fromm, Hannah Arendt, Will Herberg, Morrie Ryskind, Frank Chodorov, and Murray Rothbard.

[27][28] Allan C. Brownfeld, the editor of the ACJ's magazine, who has strongly criticized Israel in the Washington Report on Middle Easts Affairs (WRMEA), said that "I think we represent a silent majority.