Herbert A. Friedman (1918–2008)[1] was an American Reform rabbi who served as the CEO of the United Jewish Appeal and was the founding president of the Wexner Foundation.
Friedman was born to poor immigrant parents in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1918, went to public schools, and was admitted to Yale, graduating in 1938.
He left to become a U.S. Army chaplain and at the end of World War II and later in collaboration with the Hagana (the nucleus of the Israeli Defense Forces) under David Ben-Gurion, he was deeply involved in rescuing Jewish refugees from displaced persons camps in Europe and in the immigration, legal and otherwise (Aliyah Bet), of many thousands of those Jews to Israel.
When he returned to the U.S., in collaboration with the Irish Republican Army and its agents in North America, he ran guns and other weapons to Israel during its war for independence.
[2] Friedman also fought for causes not explicitly Jewish, as when he repeatedly spoke out, in the face of threats, against Senator Joseph McCarthy's campaign to root out alleged communists.