Former senior congressional staffer brought Jewish values to the Hill
At a young age, Thomas Kahn wanted to seek elected office and at 19 became the youngest city council member in the history of Brookline, Massachusetts. That enthusiasm for serving his community never left.
The former senior congressional staffer, attorney and professorial lecturer was recently appointed to be a member of the Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad by President Joe Biden. Kahn will serve on the Commission until August 2026.
“It’s an extraordinary honor and a very humbling one to be appointed by the president of the United States to a commission, but particularly to this commission, which has such an important mandate to preserve heritage sites abroad that have relevance to Americans, most notably Holocaust sites in Europe,” Kahn said.
Kahn lives in the Palisades neighborhood of Washington, D.C., with his wife and two teenage sons, and they belong to Adas Israel Congregation.
Four years ago, Kahn and his wife traveled to the shtetl where his grandmother was born in rural Lithuania; the village’s Jewish population had perished in the Holocaust. The two had to hike about a half mile into the woods to reach a Jewish cemetery: “It was really heartbreaking to see the horrible conditions.”
“Finally, we found it; we found a lot of broken tombstones and overgrown trees,” Kahn said. “When you think [of] Jewish civilization, and the culture in places like Lithuania, Europe and Poland that goes back hundreds of years, [the fact] that that’s all that’s left is really heartbreaking.”
Through the commission, he will help utilize available resources to preserve those cemeteries, plus synagogues, community centers and any other sites that connect to the Jewish community. Kahn said he looks forward to working with fellow members of the commission to make an impact, which the group seeks to do in about 20 countries.
“It’s a really exciting opportunity and really meaningful mandate,” Kahn said of his new role. “It has a very particular personal connection to me because my family is from Eastern Europe.”
Kahn grew up in a Jewish home in Boston. His family wasn’t “extremely observant,” but he and his brother were bar mitzvahed and their father was a leader of many local Jewish organizations, including the Jewish Community Center in Greater Boston.
“From a very early age, my sense of both Jewish identity and Zionism really became core in my own identity … and what was important to me,” Kahn said.
A trip to Israel as a teenager solidified his love for the country.
As a student at Tufts University, Kahn was head of the Jewish Federation fund drive and an active member of Hillel. After college, he studied in the former Soviet Union in Russia, where he worked with and helped refuseniks, Jews who were denied permission to emigrate.
Kahn then came to D.C. and worked for a member of Congress from Maryland before attending law school at Georgetown Law Center. He had a stint as a corporate attorney in New York.
“I came back to the Capitol, and I eventually landed at the House Budget Committee, where I was the staff director for the longest time in history — 20 years — and that was a great molding experience,” Kahn said. “I worked for a very fine, distinguished, marked, gifted man named Congressman John Spratt, who then became chairman of the budget committee, so I worked on the budget committee for 25 years.”
When Rep. Spratt left Congress, Kahn became chief of staff for Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) for the next six years when he served in the House of Representatives. Kahn said the budget committee was a “remarkable place” to make an impact on legislation.
He also said that Jewish values were integral to the work he did on Capitol Hill.
“Number one, of course, was continuing our assistance to Israel,” Kahn said. “[The] number two Jewish value being that of tzedakah, being very mindful of the priority to help those in our society who sometimes could not help themselves: hungry children or elderly shut-ins, or refugees or immigrants, so it was very important for me to ensure that our budget protected their interests, as well.”
Kahn was among many Jewish staffers on the Hill. In the mid-1990s, Rabbi Levi Shemtov helped organize the Capitol Jewish Forum and Kahn served as its chair for several years. Transcending political affiliations and backgrounds, the CJF provided opportunities for Jewish staffers to celebrate holidays together and befriend one another.
“These were times that really bound us and made Capitol Hill a much friendlier, much more caring place to work,” Kahn said. “It also was an opportunity for us to strengthen our Jewish identity.”
One of his proudest accomplishments is helping enact the Affordable Care Act, which helped extend health care insurance coverage for 30 million Americans.
“It’s a thrill, and it’s exciting to be in public service; you can really make a mark,” Kahn said. “I will always have a great sense of pride, and I want to convey that to my students, especially because we’re working so close to Congress, a Metro trip away.”
He added that he tries to instill this love for public service in his students at American University, where Kahn lectures on Congress, the presidency and the federal budget.
“It’s fun working with young people and talking to them about our government and sharing my life’s experience with them,” Kahn said. “But I think most important is to convey to them the importance of public service in some capacity. Democracy is not a spectator sport and the future of our country is ultimately in the hands of young people.”
