Beginning Archie Freiman had a long and distinguished leadership role in Canadian Zionism, beginning when he was twenty-one years old. In December 1901, Freiman attended the Second Convention of the Federation of Zionist Societies, in Montreal, as an official delegate representing the Kingston Jewish Community. There he was elected member of the Zionist National Council. In 1906, Freiman succeeded Samuel Bilsky as President of the Herzl Club and attended the Fifth Convention of the Federation of Zionist Societies, held in Toronto. By the end of 1906 he was chairman of the Ottawa Zionist Society. Freiman attended the Tenth Zionist Convention in Montreal in 1909 and moved a resolution favouring the purchase of land in Palestine, having been appointed to study the proposal beforehand with others. In 1912, Freiman was chairman of the Twelfth Zionist Convention, held in Ottawa, and was there elected a vice-president of the Federation of Zionist Societies.
First World War As the damage wrought upon European Jews became known, the idea of creating a Canadian Jewish Alliance became popular. In September 1915 Freiman moved a resolution "that the Federation of Zionist Societies shall call a conference of Canadian Jewry to decide what stand to take with regard to the proposed Jewish Congress to be held in the United States and that every Canadian Jewish organization be invited to the Conference." The resolution passed, and the conference, the first great gathering of Canadian Jewry, was held on November 14, 1915, with Freiman as a vice-chairman. During the conference Freiman and Louis Fitch moved a resolution, unanimously approved, that called for Jewish rights to be upheld in Palestine and Jews allowed to develop the land "without hindrance."
Inter-War Years At the Sixteenth Zionist Convention in early January 1919,
Clarence De Sola, then president of the Federation of Zionist Societies of Canada, retired. A provisional committee was formed to elect his successor, chaired by Freiman. In December 1919 Freiman was elected Dominion Executive President of the Million Dollar Relief Campaign, an organization which helped Jews in Eastern Europe. In his very first year as President Freiman tripled the organization's fund-raising, reaching $214 000. On April 20, 1920, word reached Canada that Britain had received the Mandate for Palestine with the "express obligation of carrying out the
Balfour Declaration." Freiman said: No longer are we a race without a country; no longer can we be regarded as wanderers on the face of the Earth. We are now a nation with a national home; that goal towards which our hearts have always yearned has been reached, and we Jews of this generation ought to count ourselves doubly blessed that we have lived to see this great day. World Jewry of to-day can be truly likened to a much-buffeted and battered ship that has weathered the storm of ages, of suffering and anxious hope, and now sails into the calm, placid waters of the home port. In May 1920 Freiman and five others were appointed by the Zionist Council to attend the Zionist Conference in London. In October he was part of a group of Canadian Jews who sent a cable to British Prime Minister Lloyd George, calling for Palestine's northern boundaries to be fixed and the Balfour Declaration made part of the Mandate for Palestine. At the Seventeenth Zionist Convention the provisional committee formed at the previous convention came to its conclusion and Freiman was chosen as the organization's new president. Freiman's first great challenge as president was in responding to the White Paper, a British government declaration that reduced the proposed size of the Jewish state by two-thirds through the removal of Transjordan. Freiman chose to continue to be optimistic, focusing on the positive of any return to Palestine over the negative of the restrictive White Paper. In his 1922 New Year's message, Freiman said: Today we have that very opportunity our fathers and forefathers prayed for, for nigh 2,000 years. Whereas they lived with the hope of return to our Homeland as a mirage, an ideal, we live with the return as a fact to be accomplished – if we only will it. Consider then what a magnificent privilege is ours today. O, how I wish that every Jew and Jewess would think in this way! Freiman continued in his optimism at the Nineteenth Zionist Convention in January 1924, and targeted Israel Zangwill for his pessimism. Freiman also made clear that there were not enough donations, and outlined a plan of spending that would focus on land buying in Palestine. The donations were to always be a difficulty. The fund-raising Keren Hayesod Campaign, which Freiman founded in September 1924, estimated in 1920 that twenty-five million pounds sterling could be raised by 1925, a goal that was not even half reached by 1945. Freiman had to deal with Canadian Jews, well established in Canada, who were uninterested in emigrating to Palestine and swung from extreme optimism and pessimism with respect to the future of Zionism. It was this fund-raising role that Canadian Jews had also been called upon to provide as their contribution to world Zionism, and it was to Freiman to organize it. Freiman's spirits were raised when in 1927 he first visited Palestine, at the age of 47. Discussing his experience at the Keren Hayesod campaigned dinner in March 1927, he said that: Nowhere in the world have I seen that spirit, the pride of being a Jew, as in Palestine. Preceding the Twenty-First Zionist Convention in Winnipeg Freiman's optimism and Presidency was put to its sternest test. In Ottawa was
Mendel Ussishkin, President of the Jewish National Fund in Jerusalem. He offered a challenging proposition to Freiman, the redemption of Emek Hepher, Biblically known as the Plain of Sharon. It would cost $1,000,000 to buy at $100,000 a year, with an immediate payment of $300,000. Canadian Jews, however, had only contributed $25,000 a year towards the Jewish National Fund in the previous years. Freiman contemplated the challenge for two weeks while Ussishkin was a guest at his house in Ottawa. H.M. Caiserman was a guest for a week at the Freiman house and recounted later that: In the summer of 1927, I spent a week in the summer home of the Freimans. Immortal Ussishkin was there too, with the proposal for Canadian Jewry to purchase Emek Hepher. Freiman doubted whether Canadian Jewry were prepared for such a great undertaking. Freiman considered resigning instead of bringing the proposal to the convention. After further thought he brought the discussion to the Zionist Council, where it was successfully passed. At the Twenty-First Zionist Convention, taking place the following week, the proposal was brought forward after a speech by Ussishkin, who elaborated on the Jewish history of the region to be purchased. The proposal was unanimously passed. In the excitement that immediately followed conventioneers called out their donations to the cause: A. A. Levin alone promised $25,000. As Ussishkin spread word to the Fifteenth Zionist Congress in Basle, Switzerland, congratulatory messages were sent by such figures as
Nahum Sokolow,
Leo Motzkin, the Congress Presidium and
Dr. Chaim Weizmann. The
Jewish National Fund inscribed the name of the Canadian Zionist Organization into its fourth Jubilee volume of the Golden Book. In 1932 the bank loan that was required to finance the original $300,000 payment had been paid back. Freiman's next challenge arrived in 1930 when a British Royal Commission of Inquiry formed to investigate violent Arab riots in Palestine concluded that Jewish immigration and development was the cause. A White Paper was thereafter published which limited Jewish immigration. Freiman responded with optimism and suggested that better efforts be made to share Jewish perspectives with the British, as he was convinced they had an "inherent sense of justice and fair play" and lack of information was the cause of their conclusions. Freiman said: It is true that our task is similar to that of our ancestors in the days of Pharaoh, when told to make bricks without straw being given to them, for we are told to build a National Home without immigration or the right to acquire land. But even such seemingly insurmountable difficulties we will overcome. The Jewish will has never faltered and so with our perseverance and the help of God we will yet attain our goal.
Nazism and the Second World War Freiman also supported Zionism through his own personal battles with anti-Semitism. In the 1930s, Canadian Nazi and anti-Semitic groups began to increase their preaching of discrimination and boycott of Jewish businesses. Jewish leaders were unable to curtail their efforts, and when in Montreal a Jewish merchant sued an anti-Semitic publication for "personal hurt and pecuniary loss through the libel of Jews as a people" the judge ruled that so long as a Jew was not singled out by name then no law was broken. It was in this climate that in 1935 Freiman was the target of an anti-Semitic publication, written by Jean Tissot, a detective of the Ottawa Police Department. Freiman sued Tissot for libel and won. In September 1938, responding to the treatment of Jews in Germany, Freiman wrote that: In this battle between the forces for good and evil, we who have in the past provided the world with a rallying cry must do so again. We were nurtured on the prophetic teachings of social justice, and we gave these to mankind for its own salvation. The issue to-day is clearcut; either the discordant cacophony of the devil's music or the clear God-like voice of freedom must prevail. In April 1939, Freiman explained his response to Nazi treatment of Jews, with the statement that "The only solution to Jewish suffering is Zionism. Zionism is our Messiah." In September 1939 word reached Ottawa that Germany had invaded Poland. Freiman, upon hearing the news, had a heart attack. After recovering he gave his thoughts, condemning the Nazis as barbaric and oppressive, destroyers of civilization, and pledging his support and that of Canadian Jews to the democracies. A few years later, in 1941, Freiman shared an optimistic view on the implications of the war for Judaism, stating that as the Balfour Declaration was a result of the First World War so the new war would "reinstate us in our human value and rehabilitate us as individuals and as a people." By 1943 Canada and the world had learned of the Nazi extermination of the Jews in Europe, and Britain had responded by allowing 30,000 Jewish immigrants into Palestine. Freiman, through the United Palestine Appeal, began fund-raising to finance the emigration, calling on Canadian Jews to "do our part" in aiding European Jews. By September 1943 Freiman had become certain in the eventual victory of the Allied Powers. In his New Year's message he focused on the eventual rebuilding of Judaism, calling for more than "mere existence." He explained that Jews could only improve by living "on their own soil, in their own land, the land of their Fathers – in Eretz Israel." Freiman's final speech on Zionism was read aloud at the Twenty-Seventh Zionist Convention in Montreal, on January 30, 1944, he being too sick to attend. His statement ended with a call for Jewish redemption: It is only consonant with the war aims of the United Nations that our suffering and sacrifices in these last years should be recognized by the equalization of our status with that of every other people, by being granted the opportunity to rebuild Palestine as a Jewish Commonwealth within the framework of the British Commonwealth of Nations, thus assuring to us the opportunity of living our lives as normal people. The peace shall be won only to the extent that we, the weakest of the people, shall be meted justice. ==Death==