Rabbi David Wilfond will bring global ministerial experience to the team at the Liberal Jewish Synagogue, St John's Wood.

He joins senior rabbi Alexandra Wright next month at the start of the countdown to the congregation's centenary celebrations in 2011.

A rabbi for 14 years, he has served communities in Kiev and Boston. Most recently, he has been with the Hebrew Union College in Jerusalem, where he was director of admissions and rabbi of the Murstein Synagogue.

Rabbi Wilfond said that working in Jerusalem had changed him. "Jerusalem often makes people more conservative - however, the opposite has occurred. My religious outlook has grown significantly more liberal. Israel has taught me to be an advocate for an inclusive, pluralistic Jewish future".

His wife-to-be is British.