What has gone wrong? Until recently it has been assumed that the rabbinate is a life-long vocation: you start your career as a rabbi and end it as a rabbi. No longer.

There have been an increasing number of cases of rabbis, both in Orthodox and Progressive circles, who leave mid-career, either burnt-out or wanting new challenges.

Some migrate to roles in Jewish charities or education, while others enter the world of counselling. Congregational work has just been a staging post in their career portfolio.

There is no doubt that being a community rabbi is demanding. Pastoral needs — and what family does not have its problems? — can be overwhelming.

Multiply that dozens or even hundreds of times, and rabbinic life becomes breathless trying to give everyone the attention they need. In addition, solutions are often in short supply and you feel like the little Dutch boy running from hole to hole to stop the dyke collapsing.

There has been many a day when I have received a call at 7 am from someone who said, “I just wanted to catch you before you got tied up”….and was then rung by another person later that same day at 10 pm who said, “I just wanted to catch you now that you are free”. That is a long working day!

Despite that, however, I have loved being a congregational rabbi and can recommend it thoroughly. Hard work yes, but rewarding too. It is also astonishingly varied, with no day ever being the same and a complete variety of tasks in each day.

The morning might start off doing a local school assembly, then involve a radio broadcast, followed by a hospital visit. Then time to write a quick article, making pastoral phone calls, going on to a meeting with the local vicar before preparing for a shiur and leading the study group. And breathe. Frenetic but never dull.

Savvy readers will have noticed that most of those activities are with small groups or individuals, so the vast majority of the community have no idea what I do midweek. Some might even assume I just show up on Shabbat.

This can be a frustration for rabbis, whose non-stop work is invisible and they are often not given the credit for all that they do, especially time spent on one-to-one basis with those needing care or facing personal issues.

In my own case, I have not only lasted the course for 44 years, but have done so in just one community, Maidenhead. To be honest, that was never the game-plan.

When I arrived at the congregation of 72 families, I was its first full-time rabbi and was told that I was an “experiment”: there were funds to pay me for three years and then I would have to go elsewhere.

The experiment worked - in business terms, a company with a chief executive driving it is more likely to expand than one with just a board - and we are now 956 households, with me still there.

Spending such a long time in one community has both benefits and pitfalls. On the positive side, I have become “the family rabbi”.

It is not uncommon for me to do the baby blessing of someone whose parent's marriage I did, as well as their barmitzvah and baby blessing, and whose grandparents I have also married and whose great-grandparents I have buried.

Having a cycle of life involvement with four generations of the same family is incredibly enriching for me and can mean a lot to them. If I also know their pet rabbit’s name, so much the better (and I do).

The downside is that it can be easy to fall into a rut, lose one’s initial energy and simply coast along, leading to personal lethargy for the rabbi and the community failing to develop.

I have tried to avoid that by making it a personal discipline to introduce new ideas and projects each year, as well as keeping fresh by having outside causes every decade.

This has involved advocating a more welcoming attitude to mixed-faith couples, campaigning for faith schools to be more inclusive and pressing for the legalisation of assisted dying for those terminally ill who so wish.

Might the system that used to be one of the hallmarks of the Methodist Church be better for rabbis: that their ministers change pulpits every seven years?

It certainly means congregations are regularly exposed to new thinking, while the ministers avoid becoming stale. But then relationships are always time-limited.

I suspect there is no ideal model, and that so much depends on the chemistry between the rabbi and the community. We should celebrate it when it works and have the honesty to call it a day when it does not.

Rabbi Romain is leaving Maidenhead Synagogue next week to concentrate on his new position as convenor of the Reform Beit Din.