Herbert A. Friedman to Harold G. Jaffer or "Mr. Rabinowitz," 25 August 1947, Herbert A. Friedman Papers (MS-763), American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati, Ohio.

"A remarkable display of national Jewish solidarity."*

Rabbi Herbert A. Friedman served in the United States Army?s Chaplaincy Corps, rescuing Jewish refugees from Southern Bavaria during World War II. He worked with other Jewish groups, like the American Joint Distribution Committee ? a worldwide relief organization established in 1914, and the Jewish Agency for Palestine ? an organization that served the administrative needs of Jewish communities during the period of the British Mandate in Palestine. He performed his duties so well that he was recruited to the Haganah twice ? a secretive and illegal defense organization active during the period of the British Mandate. In 1945, David Ben-Gurion, who would later become Israel's first prime minister, recruited Friedman to help transport refugees from Europe to Palestine, after which Rabbi Friedman returned to his congregation in Denver at Temple Emanuel. Teddy Kollek, later the mayor of Jerusalem, recruited him a second time to assist the Haganah with smuggling arms to Palestine.

In 1947, Rabbi Friedman was involved in the secret Haganah mission of acquiring and distributing arms to Palestine. This secret project was known as Rechesh, which is the Hebrew word meaning ?to acquire or obtain.? Ben-Gurion was in charge of this mission as well. He believed that the Arabs would never agree to an independent Jewish state and that it would only exist through an act of war. This belief caused Ben-Gurion to begin acquiring weapons to prepare for war. Friedman also believed that Israel would not be able to exist with out a ?war of independence,? but the export of arms to the Middle East was forbidden under the United States Government?s Embargo Act. The Haganah created ?satchel charges? to be used to destroy large obstacles such as iron gates, or stonewalls. The satchels contained bricks of dynamite and were more powerful than land mines. The only problem with this was the inability to obtain dynamite in brick form.

Despite the U.S. Embargo Act, Teddy Kollek created a plan for Friedman. Friedman established a mining company in Denver, to allow him to order dynamite bricks. The bricks were stored in an abandoned mineshaft outside of Boulder, Colorado. The plan was to ship the bricks to a port in Tampico, Mexico. In order to discreetly ship the bricks of dynamite, Rabbi Friedman created another company ? one which shipped canned fruit to the Middle East. The bricks were repacked to resemble packages of canned fruit and shipped to Mexico, where they would then be sent on to Palestine.

The Haganah had paid a deposit on a tramp steamer in the port of Tampico and had four days to acquire the rest of the money, $400,000, or they would lose the ship. The ship was going to be used to deliver the arms to Palestine. Rabbi Friedman was sent to Mexico City, where he met another Haganah worker named Avram Fein, a carpenter from kibbutz Ein Hashofet. Rabbi Friedman and Avram Fein were in charge of fundraising within the Jewish population in Mexico City for the required money. In his letter Friedman outlined several basic principles of the fundraising campaign:
1. That it would be a secret, quiet campaign
2. That it would be a fast campaign
3. That it would be a small campaign
4. That a list would be compiled of approximately 250 names, and these would be solicited
5. That there would be several meetings arranged at various homes
6. That those who did not attend the private meetings would be approached individually for their contributions

Rabbi Friedman and Mr. Fein worked with Elias Sourasky, a banker, and Arturo Wolfowitz, the Pepsi Cola distributor in Mexico City. Rabbi Friedman wrote in his letter that the men met secretly with affluent individuals in order to get the money in the short time period. After the first campaign meeting on August 22, at the house of Arturo Wolfowitz, Rabbi Friedman wrote under the detailed list of donations, ?On the basis of the above figure, with five donations still to come in, I feel certain that 50,000 was reached the first night.? On the fourth day, they had obtained the required amount of money and sent it to Tampico from where the ship was procured and the arms sent to Palestine.

*The quote above is from Herbert A. Friedman's autobiography, Roots of the Future, page 138.