Edgware and Hendon Reform will be adding to its ministerial team with the arrival of Rabbi Tanya Sakhnovich in November.

Currently at The Liberal Synagogue Elstree, she will be with EHRS for a year, while the recruitment process for an additional permanent rabbi or cantor takes place.

Before joining the Elstree congregation, Rabbi Sakhnovich served the Nottingham Liberal community for 12 years.

She is co-ordinator of rabbinic community placements at Leo Baeck College, from which she gained her rabbinic ordination, and Jewish chaplain to the Rampton psychiatric hospital.

Growing up in Belarus, she ran many activities for the World Union for Progressive Judaism. In Nottingham, she was at the forefront of the Salaam-Shalom Kitchen, a Jewish-Muslim initiative to feed the homeless.

EHRS rabbis Mark Goldsmith and Debbie Young-Somers have known her for many years and Rabbi Goldsmith said they had admired her efforts “to build the Jewish community in so many ways, in Nottingham and here in London. We are sure that her year at EHRS will help us to bring great energy and new connections into our congregation."