Alan Budman, International 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. 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.
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 has 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.
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.
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.
Gary is married to Lynne, and they have two adult sons – Jonathan and Joshua. Gary began his Men’s Club career “because David Shechter asked him to join Men’s Club” at Temple Etz Chaim in Thousand Oaks, CA in 2008. Within a few years, he was the Men’s Club President, then the Temple President, moving on to Western Region Presidency in 2019. Gary has chaired and been heavily involved in the HMV and the nascent Imagine Life initiative. Gary serves as a Psychology Professor at California State University, Northridge and maintains a small private psychological practice in Thousand Oaks, CA.
Dr. Alexander Kiderman received his Ph.D in mechanical engineering from Academy of Science, Moscow, Russia. Alex has devoted his engineering and academic career developing new technology, equipment and software.
He has received more than 50 patents and published multiple papers in research journals, presented at multiple domestic and international conference and symposiums. From the Jewish perspective, Alex began his involvement in Pittsburgh’s Beth Shalom Men’s Club, and has served as President of Hebrew Free Loan Association, President of Tri-State Region and now International Vice-President of FJMC.
Javier is our Secretary. He lives in New York with his wife, Rebecca, and children, Joshua and Laila. Having attended Jewish day school in Buenos Aires, Javier has been committed to Jewish learning, continuity, and community his whole life. He served as President of the Orangetown Jewish Center Men’s Club before becoming involved in the Hudson Valley Region, serving as its President during the 2019-2021 term. Professionally, Javier has a Masters degree in electronics engineering and now does IT consulting. For fun, Javier likes to “build stuff”, including high-tech toys and woodworking and works every summer at Ramah Day Camp in Nyack as Master woodworker.
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.
A native of the Chicago area, Gregg currently lives in the city with his wife Julie. He has two adult sons, Russell and Jordan, who live in Brooklyn and Tel Aviv, respectively. Professionally, Gregg was most recently in CEO and CFO roles for healthcare technology companies until retiring from full-time positions in mid-2021. He now provides strategic consulting services to small business owners to help them evaluate long-term strategies for their companies. He has a strong accounting and finance background, including both undergraduate and graduate degrees from The Wharton School of Business, as well as 25 years of investment banking experience prior to his operating roles.
Gregg is passionate about maintaining the vitality and relevance of the Conservative Movement and believes that FJMC is an essential force for change and a catalyst for progress within our movement. This passion and belief have driven Gregg’s increasing involvement in FJMC, beginning with attending his first FJMC convention in Chicago in 2007 at the behest of his good friend and mentor (and then incoming international president) Norm Kurtz. Shortly thereafter, Gregg moved from the suburbs to the city where he co-founded a new men’s club at Anshe Emet Synagogue and began to participate regularly in the Rose Crown lay-led minyan. Subsequent FJMC positions included an at-large Executive Committee role from 2015-17, Convention Ritual Chair in 2017, LDI Emerging Leaders Co-track leader in 2020, and Midwest Region Treasurer from 2019-23.
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. After being club President, Bob moved on to Seaboard region, serving as President from 2019-2021. Nearing retirement, Bob picked up IT skills, and continued as a State consultant on online collaboration and communications. He went to the 2011 Convention and was asked to edit The Unraveller, the beginning of his involvement with FJMC IT. He set up the first FJMC webinars and helped with social media, tech training, and photography and video, and is now helping manage the migration of the FJMC website to a new platform.
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.
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.
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.
Danny is currently leading the effort to attract new clubs and members, as the Overall Chair of Expanding Clubs and Membership, and is Co-Chair of the very popular Sports Affinity Group.
David Glass is a Past President of the Northern NJ Region of the FJMC. He is a Past President of his Men’s Club as well as a Past Synagogue President of Temple Beth Ahm Yisrael in Springfield 2009-2012. He served many years as Jewish youth leader shepherding award winning USY chapters as well as teaching religious school.
David enlisted in the United States Navy from 1986 to 1994. While serving in the Navy, David served the Jewish community as a Jewish Lay Leader (an official designation) on the USS Lasalle and the USS Suribachi. As such, he conducted Shabbat and holiday services for his fellow Jewish servicemen; including the conducting of a Passover Seder on the USS Lasalle while the ship was in port in Muscat, Oman.
David has taught Social Studies at Parsippany High School for the last 23 years after being awarded his BA in History from Montclair State University in 2000, and an MBA in Nonprofit Management from Touro University in 2016. David is married to Lisa Harris Glass they have two children Carolyn and Jonah.
Mitch is passionate about the FJMC and has served in many roles at the club, regional and national level, most recently as Chair of the 2023 Leadership Development Institute. He is a Past President of Congregation Or Tzion in Scottsdale, AZ, and sits on the Pacific Southwest Regional Council of the USCJ.
Mitch lives in Paradise Valley, Arizona with his wife Heather, a professor at ASU. They have three children, Alison, Kate and Shell. He is an avid photographer and a moderately obsessive cyclist. In his remaining time, Mitch works as an interventional cardiologist and manages a busy clinical practice in Phoenix.
Phil Margolis, President of the Connecticut Valley Region of the FJMC, has been an engaged member of the Jewish community for most of his life. He has been involved with FJMC at the local and regional levels for more than 16 years. He served as his congregation’s Brotherhood president from 2015-2017, during which his club was recognized as a Quality Club and Torch Award winner. Phil was recognized with the Connecticut Valley Region’s Keeper of the Flame Award in 2008 and as the region’s Ma’asim Tovim honoree in 2019.
A long-time member of Beth Sholom B’nai Israel in Manchester, Connecticut, he served as president of the congregation from 2018 to 2020. Prior to that role, he served as the synagogue’s executive vice president, vice president of fundraising and chaired or served on various committees and projects. Once in a blue moon, he can be heard chanting Torah on Shabbat.
Outside of his synagogue, Phil has served on the Jewish Federation of Greater Hartford’s Jewish Community Relations Council and other volunteer capacities. He was also the founding president of Rebuilding Together Hartford (then known as Christmas in April Hartford), an organization dedicated to keeping low-income homeowners living in warmth, safety and independence.
A corporate communications professional, Phil has spent his career helping large financial services companies engage with their internal and external stakeholders. His work has been recognized by the regional Public Relations Society of America and the International Association of Business Communicators.
Phil and Sue live in Glastonbury, Conn. They enjoy theater, traveling and spending time in Rhode Island. They’re occasionally graced with the presence of their four children, Jacob, Melissa, Alex and Emily.
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