Reform rabbis have honoured the movement's president Rabbi Tony Bayfield by producing a festschrift, a collection of essays, dedicated to him.

A Passion for Judaism, edited by Rabbi Jonathan Romain, contains contributions from 29 Reform rabbis, including Rabbi Bayfield's daughter, Rabbi Miriam Berger of Finchley Reform Synagogue.

Rabbi Bayfield, who retired as the professional head of the movement at the end of last year, is currently working on a book of Reform theology. It aims to be "personal, not academic, but I hope has sufficient scholarly content to be respectable", he told the Reform council on Sunday.

He said he could not remember "when a serious book of Jewish theology, of Jewish belief, was last published within Anglo-Jewry. You have to go back to the work of Louis Jacobs… and within Reform, you have to go back a very long way to Ignaz Maybaum [who died in 1976]."