I recently watched a video by Sam Aronow on Youtube regarding the Reform movemennt in the US and was wondering how it was that, with so many Jewish Americans arriving to Israel after independence today we see little Reform representation. In fact, Reform is the one branch of modern Judaiism not legally recognized in Israel's religious courts. You can have a Reform synagouge, but the Rabbinate is Conservative and Orthodox only, from what I understannd. How did this happen under years of a Socialist government? Was this ever even a question among Labour Zionists? Was the Reform movement so localized to the US that it didn't matter?
In short, to answer your question there was a shift in Labour Zionism combined with state preference for Orthodox institutions combined with later immigrants not bringing in Reform with them.
So firstly, I wanted to correct some things here:
with so many Jewish Americans arriving to Israel after independence today we see little Reform representation.
Americans are not the largest group, and overall, there have not been that many Americans immigrating to Israel.
The largest immigration came from Russia, Morocco, and other countries in the Middle East/Near Asia. Roughly it is almost a 50/50 split on NEMA/Europe for the original point of immigration currently. None of those communities would have brought Reform with them. The Russians were persecuted by the Soviets and were largely secularized, the Mizrachi/Sephardic Jews never separated into those groups.
Israelis are more likely to be Hiloni (secular) than Dati (religious), and there are also many who call themselves Masorti (traditional), although this is not the same as Masorti (Conservative) Judaism those are the three main groups inside Israel, unlike the US where it is largely a Reform/Conservative/Orthodox split.
Reform itself is most popular in the US, but worldwide numbers show a lower representation of Reform, Australia has none, for example where 70% of Jews are Orthodox. In the UK Reform is lower than Orthodoxy and in Canada as well (Masorti/Conservative is the largest) to give a few examples. Although to add here, since it comes as a surprise to some, the Reform in Israel does not count Patrilineal ancestry as they do inside the US, which was a primary driver of Reform's popularity as intermarriage increased among American Jews.
In fact, Reform is the one branch of modern Judaism not legally recognized in Israel's religious courts.
I'm having a hard time finding a source for this, although I can tell you that internally Israel recognizes Reform and Conservative conversions for the purposes of making Aliyah, which is secular law, but the Rabbinate does not count them as Jews under religious law.
The Rabbinate controls who can get married and buried, roughly and they hold the final say on who is Jewish in that regard, and they only recognize an Orthodox definition of Jewishness. They do not see any other type of Judaism other than Orthodox as legitimate. My assumption here is that the above is incorrect, but I am still unsure of what "in Israel's religious courts" means, as overall the Rabbinate controls very few aspects of everyday life, although what they do control can have large ramifications.
but the Rabbinate is Conservative and Orthodox only, from what I understand.
The Rabbinate is a holdover from the Ottoman period, which was then taken on by the British and then was then adopted by the Israeli government. They are only Orthodox, as I mentioned before.
How did this happen under years of a Socialist government? Was this ever even a question among Labour Zionists?
The early Labor Zionists did not care for religion and did not consider themselves religious. They established socialist communities to place the worker at the center of the social structure. They wanted to "invert the pyramid" and pull in Jews who were impoverished, oppressed, and ideologically committed to their brand of Zionism. They sought land to create emancipation in Palestine/Israel where they had largely not had it before in the Jewish diaspora.
Prior to the first aliyot in the late 1800s, there were communities inside Israel that had been established previously by those who were religious (the "old Yishuv), those who were fleeing persecution, or those who remained in Israel while others were driven out in contrast to the socialists these groups were religious.
These religious groups, (largely Sephardic Jews) created Jaffa and Haifa and were living in Jerusalem as well as some Ashkenazi settlements in places like Tzfat (Safed) and Tiberius.
As another aside here, demographic information is difficult to come by and in some cases incorrect or missing for large periods of time. It is difficult to get an exact estimate of how many people, of any group, were in certain areas. For example, it is possible that Jews were a majority in Jerusalem for various periods, however, that demographic information could also be inexact and sometimes the Ottoman clerks were prone to copy information from prior years to fill in gaps since we see the number fluctuate by large amounts from year to year.
The Labour movement became the dominant form of Zionism in 1927-1937 and elected David Ben-Gurion as their President in 1935. Ben-Gurion reshaped Labour Zionism from the worker into the idea of Messianic Redemption and echoed those ideas instead of the Labour ideals of the socialist worker being the core or foundation ideal.
This happened after the establishment of the state of Israel, and some argue that this trend started in an effort by the early settlers to get independence from the British.
To explain some history here Jewish immigration was severely limited by the British prior to WWII and after in the White Paper of 1939, made in response to Arab Revolts. The policy set forth by that paper lasted until the foundation of the state of Israel in 1948.
Zionism shifted due to the Holocaust and WWII. Many European Jews, despite not being under Nazi control were living in very similar conditions in Displaced Persons camps, these camps were under US control but frequently employed formed Nazi guards. Patton who was in control of these camps had little love for Jews and called Jews "lower than animals". Conditions in these camps were atrocious and many tried to immigrate to Israel, some were smuggled in after making long journeys on makeshift boats and overland.
This refugee crisis, and the resulting shift in world opinion towards Britain's policies plus the British inability to control Palestine eventually caused them to abandon it completely. It also affected Israeli perceptions, creating an "us vs them" idea due to the tragedy of the Holocaust, and the refusal of nations to help save Jews prior to the Holocaust (Evian conference) and the resulting Refugee crisis after.
These events caused Israel's politics to shift so that by the time the State of Israel was established Labour Zionism was not the Socialist Labour-Focused party it was prior to these events, moving from a farm-based worker ideal to the idea of saving world Jewry and a realizing of Messianic Redemption. Even at the foundation of the state most of the Society was urban instead of agricultural. *Some also note that this could have been a pivot to attract American Jewish support as the Cold War started and America was starting to see Communism in a bad light.
In 1947 Israel took the Ottoman system of Jewish personal status (the Rabbinate), despite saying that Israel should have "an absence of coercion or discrimination in religious affairs" 18 religions were recognized at that time yet Orthodox Judaism effectively functions as the state religion. This happened with funding going to only, or primarily Orthodox institutions and state ostracizing non-Orthodox streams.
Later waves of immigration also did not import reform as they were not introduced to it. Jewish immigration immediately following the creation of the state was Mizrachi (Eastern) Jews between 1948-1956 around 810,000 Mizrachi Jews immigrated to Israel. As I mentioned earlier, there was no split of these Jews into the divisions we see among Ashkenazim and they would just consider themselves Jews, not "Reform" or "Conservative" or "Orthodox".
Later waves of immigrants came from Russia from the former Soviet Union when Gorbachev finally allowed the Refuseniks and other Jews to leave and immigrate to Israel. These groups were largely secular due to the USSR's repressive policies on Jews. These groups would not have seen themselves as "Reform", etc. as their view of Jewishness is largely ethnic based, because of the USSR's policies
So overall as I said initially Reform never really took hold in Israel due to a few factors, for starters, it was never really brought into Israel in large numbers, and policies in Israel clearly preferred and supported Orthodox Judaism.
Sources (So I can keep track of them):
Jewish Emancipation by David Sorkin
American Judaism by Sarna
A Century of Ambivalence by Gitelman
The Jews of The Soviet Union, Pinkus
Israel and the Holocaust Trauma: Jewish History Vol. 11, No. 2 (Fall, 1997), pp. 13-20
The answer is pretty simple: American Jews are in fact a very minor component of Israel's Jewish population (around 3%), and Reform has never been widespread anywhere else. In fact, even in the US it wasn't the majority of Jews until around the 1990s, so many immigrants would have arrived in an era when most American Jews were Conservative or Orthodox. Furthermore, immigrants to Israel tend to be disproportionally Orthodox. This has many reasons, but the key is that Reform by nature is tied to assimilation and integration, while Orthodoxy tends to a traditional separatist attitude and maintains a religious obligation of living in Israel.
Now, for a more detailed answer. As you have mentioned Sam Aronow, I assume you are familiar with the circumstances surrounding the collapse of Jewish communal structure in early 19th century Western (Germanic) Europe and the origins of Reform Judaism. What we need to remember is that the vast majority of European Jews lived in Eastern Europe, not in its West, and that the characteristics of these two Jewish communities were very different. In Western Europe, Jews were a small component of the population, their Yiddish language was but a dialect of the surrounding German language, and they were more urban and affluent. In Eastern Europe, Jews formed a significant part of the population, forming close to a majority in whole tracts of land, their Yiddish language was completely different from the surrounding Slavic languages, and they were more rural and poor. While Jews were being emancipated in Western Europe, persecution and pogroms were only intensifying in the Russian Empire where most Eastern European Jews lived.
As more and more German Jews were abandoning Judaism completely and even converting to Christianity, Reform rejected this total assimilation, but advocated far reaching changes to Judaism. Lead by both pure theological considerations and a goal of making Judaism compatible with the modern life and nation, it mostly abandoned the ritualistic aspects of Judaism, as well as most notions of Jewish nationhood, in favor of a progressive program which sees the destiny of Jews as living among the nations spreading morality and monotheism. Needless to say, this program was not very necessary or successful among the poor, persecuted, firmly separate Jewish communities in Eastern Europe, let alone in the Islamic lands (though there was an attempt to establish a Reform congregation in Aleppo). It wasn't particularly successful in Germany either, where there remained strong prejudice even against secular or converted Jews. Many Jews were content with having a traditional (Orthodox) Jewish marriage or Bar Mitzvah while otherwise leading completely secular lives, participating in tradition without Reform's worship-centered innovations. It did however find success in the free, new world of the United States. And it often went very far. Many congregations moved the Sabbath to Sunday to make it more compatible with the civic schedule. Others declared Tisha B'Av, the day of mourning over the destruction of the temple and exile from Israel, to be a day of joy. The transformation was epitomized by the infamous Trefa Banquet.
Zionism originated as the polar opposite. It was, for the most part, a reaction to the failure of Jewish emancipation in Europe. While Reform sanctified the Diaspora, Zionism rejected it completely. Many Zionists, particularly Labor Zionists, were complete atheists who saw Jews as almost a nation only. Reform Jews, seeking complete integration, often saw Zionism as an impossible delusion that could only jeopardize the situation of Jews worldwide. The Pittsburgh platform, a key statement of the early American Reform movement, explicitly stated that Jews are no longer a nation, and rejected a return to Palestine and the re-establishment of a state.
The mass immigration of Eastern European Jews to America in the early 20th century forced the Reform movement to realign itself with tradition. The intensification of persecution in Eastern Europe, itself a trigger for immigration, also increased support for Zionism. The Balfour declaration of 1917, in which the world's foremost power declared its support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine, cemented the movement's legitimacy and seriousness. Some Reform rabbis became influential Zionists, such as Judah Leon Magnes who was the first chancellor of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. However, a proper liberal synagogue was not established in Israel until the 1930s, with an influx of well-assimilated German Jews fleeing the new Nazi government now ruling the birthplace of Jewish assimilationism. The horror of the Holocaust, followed by the successful establishment of the independent State of Israel, all but quashed the once dominant anti-Zionist faction of the Reform movement. It took another 10 years for the first American-style Reform synagogue to be established in Israel.
Sources:
Statistical Abstract of Israel
The Impact of Denomination: Differences in the Israel-Related Opinions of American Rabbis and Jewish Communal Workers
Recent Trends in American Judaism
Progressive Judaism in Poland: Dilemmas of Modernity and Identity
The Origins of Jewish Secularization in Eighteenth-Century Europe
The Cambridge History of Judaism
The Sunday-Sabbath movement in American Reform Judaism