Nationality British Children 3 | Name Tony Bayfield Role Rabbi | |
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Occupation Reform rabbi
President of the Movement for Reform Judaism Books Churban: The Murder of the Jews of Europe | ||
Rosh Hashanah message from Rabbi Tony Bayfield
Anthony Michael "Tony" Bayfield CBE is a Reform rabbi and former President of the Movement for Reform Judaism, the second largest organisation of synagogues in Britain.
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Bayfiedd was born in 1946 in Ilford, Essex (now in Greater London). He was educated at the Royal Liberty Grammar School in Romford and Magdalene College, Cambridge. He studied law and had a doctoral place at the Cambridge Institute of Criminology and then moved to the Leo Baeck College to train as a rabbi. He received rabbinic ordination (semichah) in 1972 from rabbis John Rayner, Hugo Gryn and Louis Jacobs.
He was a congregational rabbi in Surrey for a decade, then director of the Sternberg Centre for Judaism in Finchley. He was head of the Movement for Reform Judaism from 1994 (when the organisation was known as Reform Synagogues of Great Britain) until 2011. From 2011 to 2016 he was President of the organisation.
Bayfield is a specialist in modern Jewish thought and contemporary Reform Judaism. He also specialises in Jewish-Christian and Jewish-Muslim dialogue and has published quite widely in this area. Bayfield has also written about Christian–Jewish reconciliation.
He is a widower with three children and six grandchildren. His younger daughter, Miriam Berger, received semichah in July 2006 and is a respected rabbi in her own right. He is a member of North Western Reform Synagogue (Alyth Gardens). He is a passionate supporter of West Ham United F.C.
Bayfield was awarded a CBE in the 2011 New Year Honours List for services to Reform Judaism.
London's National Portrait Gallery holds a photographic portrait of him by Don McCullin.