Biographies

Allan Kahan

Allan Kahan, President, has served as Vice President of the Leadership Development and Training, Regions and Club Services and Communications portfolios.  Allan was born in Bethesda, Maryland, and raised in Silver Spring, MD, where he continues to live with his wife of over 42 years, Helene, and is father of Ariel (Washington, DC), Shira (Washington, DC) and Jared (New York City, NY).  After graduating from the University of Tulsa law school, Allan got involved in United Jewish Appeal Young Leadership in the Washington, DC area, where he met Helene.  Allan retired from the federal government in June 2017.  He was an attorney for the U.S. Department of Agriculture for 15 years, then went into private practice, and finally as an Analyst with the Department of Agriculture and then Transportation Security Administration for a total of 18 years.  Allan continues to practice small business collection law.

Allan has been involved in both his synagogue (Ohr Kodesh, Chevy Chase, MD) and the Federation of Jewish Men’s Club (FJMC) for over 25 years.  Allan helped reestablish the Men’s Club at Ohr Kodesh, was President of the club for three years, then went on to be Treasurer and then President of the Seaboard Region, FJMC.  Allan has held numerous additional positions with the FJMC, including Torch Award Chairman, Editor of The Advantage (newsletter for club leaders), webmaster for the FJMC, Secretary.  For five and a half years he worked with Captain Ruach, Burt Fischman, of blessed memory, providing Leadership Development training for the Executive Committee.

Alan Budman

Alan Budman, First Vice President, was born and raised in the Philadelphia area.  He is married to Susan and they are the proud parents of Heather (married to Chris) and Traci (married to Dustin) and the ecstatic grandparents of Isabella Rose and Avary Denae.  He is now retired and was previously an attorney.  He also taught at Penn State University for 28 years.  He has served as President of the Associated Alumni of Central High School, a Big Brother volunteer with Jewish Family Services, Vice President of Melrose B’Nai Israel and Chair of the Development Committee of the American Heart Association’s Philadelphia Office.  He was President of the Temple Sinai (Dresher) Men’s Club and the Middle Atlantic Region. He is the past Co-Chair of the Keruv Initiative of FJMC, a Senior Consultant, past Co-Chair of the Yellow Candle Program, past Program Convention Chair, and past Vice President for Programs, Regions, and Training. He is a fellow of the Foundation for Jewish Life.

Marc Cohen

Marc and his wife Lisa are the proud parents of Brandon, and are members of Temple Beth Sholom in Cherry Hill, NJ, where Marc has served as Men’s Club President. As devoted New York Giants fan living in New Jersey, Marc learned long ago how to engage in raucous debate.

An educator, Marc has received Holocaust Education training in Jerusalem from Yad VaShem. Marc has served in a number of offices in the Middle Atlantic Region and finished his term as regional president in 2021.

He is a proud alumni of LDI and has attended 7 FJMC International Conventions.

Elliot Feldman

Elliot has lived in the greater Boston area his whole life.  He and his wife Marcia have four children Joshua, Amanda (husband- Jon), Adam (wife- Alison) and Sarah (husband- Adam). Professionally, he has worked with elders throughout his entire career.  For the past thirty-five years, he has been working to help low vision elders increase their independence.  He founded his own company, Visions of Independence, fifteen years ago.  Elliot loves to bake, particularly a weekly challah for Friday night dinner. 

David Singer

David P. Singer lives in Framingham, MA with his wife Randy.  He has two sons, Daniel who just stated his first job working for Qualtrics in Provo Utah doing internal sales and Noah who lives in Waltham, MA and works for National Grid.  David has worked Raytheon for 31 years as a software engineer on air traffic control systems, weather radar systems, and Navy radar.

David founded his club at Temple Israel of Natick, MA in the year 2000 and served as president for 5 years.  He then became involved in the New England Region and held positions as TheRetreat co-chair and Membership VP ultimately holding the position of Regional President (2015-2017).  As Regional President, he created a leadership database to improve membership involvement and he ensured that each event had a program guide for use by future program leaders. He brought the organization into the next century using Dropbox and Google Drive.

David’s has been bringing a unique mindfulness prayer service called, Tefilat HaNeshama, Prayer of the Soul to congregations across the country.  In addition, David created the Divrei Hashavua, weekly parasha Hebrew word program for use in Shabbat fliers and weekly email blasts at Temple Israel.  This program has since expanded to other congregations across North America.

During his term as VP of Communications, David re-envisioned the HaShofar and Advantage publications to use a modern look and feel, and to sending regular monthly issues.  He added new sections to HaShofar including monthly donations, Help Wanted and an FJMC "Why" section.  He built a team to generate these publications. In addition, oversaw the IT committee which met monthly. David continues promote the use of Google drive to store all our documents and procedures.   David continues to use his extensive organization skills to set up affinity group procedures as well as create a training database.

Benny Sommerfeld

Benny Sommerfeld (a native Swede) is a firm believer in FJMC’s simple but powerful mission statement, “Involving Jewish Men in Jewish Life”. This has guided Benny to be actively involved in Men’s Club on a local and regional level since 2005. He has held many positions and was elected Club President 2012-2014. Three years later in the summer of 2017, he became president of the Western Region. On an international level, Benny has presented at several LDIs, served as Religious Chair in 2015. and as a member of the Executive Committee has led club services. Benny lives with his wife Irma and their two daughters in Thousand Oaks, CA. Benny belongs to Temple Etz Chaim where he enjoys being a layman “davener” with a lot of ruach.

Bruce Tomar, Vice President, was born and raised in Philadelphia, Pa and now lives in Cherry Hill, NJ with his wife of 43 years, Marcia. Bruce is the father of Jennifer, David (married to Bree), and Heather (married to Andrew) and the grandfather to Zachary and Harvest. Bruce is a graduate of the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy and Science where he earned his Bachelor of Science degree in Pharmacy. He had been a vice president at Garfield Refining Company. Bruce has been involved in men’s club for over 30 years, first at Oxford Circle Jewish Community Center and then at Congregation Beth El in Voorhees, NJ. It was at Beth El that Bruce rose to the position of Men’s Club President. From there Bruce moved up to the executive board of the Middle Atlantic Region and became its president in 2008. Bruce has also served as the training chair for LDI, overall chair for LDI, training chair at convention 2013 and program chair at convention 2017. Bruce ihas also been the vice president for programming and vice president for Region and Club Services for the FJMC.  Bruce and Marcia have moved to Ventor on the Jersey shore, where he regularly plays Monopoly.

Bob Watts

Bob grew up in Connecticut, and after grad school went to work for the State Department, serving in DC, Portugal and Brazil. He met his wife Linda at State and they served together in Peru, Canada and Uzbekistan and settled at Olam Tikvah in Fairfax, VA with children Vega and Zach. Bob picked up IT skills, and continued as a State consultant on online collaboration and communications. Bob went to the 2011 Convention and was asked to edit The Unraveller. He set up the first FJMC webinars and helped with social media, tech training, and photography and video. After being club President, Bob moved on to Seaboard region, serving as President from 2019-2021.

Danny Mandeau

Danny has been involved with organized Jewish groups since his USY days. Danny’s passion for Yiddishkeit has been an important part of his life especially as it relates to singing.

Danny has been very involved with his shul . Most notably, serving as a board member and officer for 12 years. As Danny termed out of those responsibilities he shifted his focus to the FJMC. Danny chaired the very successful 2021 Virtual Convention that took place June 6-13, 2021.

For the year ahead Danny will Chair the FJMC Weekend Retreat/Shabbaton taking place in Los Angeles from March 31-April 3, 2022. Danny is Chair of the FJMC's Region Presidents Committee.

Creighton Cohn

Creighton grew up in St. Louis, Missouri where he resides with his wife and three children and is a member of Congregation B’nai Amoona.  He has had many different roles in the FJMC, including the Programming Chair for the 2019 convention and the Ritual Chair for the 2015 convention, among others.  He is currently the President of the FJMC’s Midwest Region and the chair of the FJMC’s Regional Presidents’ Committee.

In addition to the FJMC, he is also involved in many different community organizations.  He is one of the two commissioners of the St. Louis Inter-congregation softball league in which synagogue teams play each other, and, the captain of his synagogue’s team.  He is also a volunteer with the St. Louis  Naturally Occurring Retirement Community and a member of Jews United for Justice, among others.

Creighton works as a solo attorney who primarily represents individual consumers in matters such as credit reporting and debt collection issues as well as fraud and lemon law cases and also represents small businesses and handles commercial litigation. He is often asked to give continuing legal education classes for the Missouri Bar on various topics related to consumer law and alternative dispute resolution.  He also mediates disputes between lawyers and clients for the Missouri Bar and between landlords and tenants for the Missouri Courts.

Tom Sudow

Tom is our Honorary President and Immediate Past President.  He has been involved with the FJMC on the international level since 1995. HeS lives in Cleveland, Ohio with his wife Michele and is the father of three children and three granddaughters.   He is the Director of Business Development for Cleveland Clinic Innovations and the Director of the Burton D. Morgan Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at Ashland University.  He also serves as an Advisor to eHealth Ventures a venture capital firm investing internationally in the digital health space; as a member of the Due Diligence Committee for the Akron BioInnovation Fund (Fund 1 and 2); and as an advisor to SCI a Chinese investment firm investing in the United States and Israel.   He has made over 40 trips to Israel on business (and a few for pleasure)Tom is a member of Park Synagogue in Cleveland and served as President of the Men’s Club.  He has served the FJMC as a member of the Executive Committee in various leadership capacities  and as President of the Cleveland Subregion and Vice President of both the Great Lakes and KIO Regions.  He was the founding Chairman of the FJMC Foundation for Jewish life and continues to serve on the Foundation’s Board.  Tom is committed to the community and has served in leadership for a number of organizations in the Jewish and general communities For his work, he has been recognized with awards from many economic development and community organizations.  As a student on Young Judaea Year Course in 1972/73, he helped formed a morning Minyan.  Later, as a joke, the morning Minyan crew had Synagogue titles bestowed on them.... Tom was named, by his peers, as President of the Men's Club..... even back than they had him pegged as to where he would spend much of his adult life involved in Men's Club and the FJMC.