Rabbi Joseph Dweck, the senior rabbi of the S & P Sephardi Community, has said he hopes to remain as at its leader “for the foreseeable future”.

At a packed pre-High Holy-Day pep talk to SPSC members and representatives of its affiliates and other Sephardi communities at the Royal Society of Medicine in London, he said he would stay “if you will have me.

“I want to say that to you because I know that there have been questions.”

Rabbi Dweck, who arrived from New York to head the UK’s oldest Orthodox community five years ago, declared: “I intend to see this through. And it will be no greater honour to me than to serve the kahal [community].”

By coincidence, he gave his talk on the evening of Ellul 27, the same Hebrew date that Britain’s oldest synagogue, Bevis Marks, was inaugurated 318 years ago.

Recalling the historic legacy of Western Sephardim, he said: “We can offer something to the Jewish world that is needed.”

Emphasising its tolerant ethos, Rabbi Dweck described the movement as “pragmatic and human-centred.

“We are worldly because we look at the world as an elaborate expression of God, not an elaborate distraction from God. We look at the world as open for us, as a place that God wants us to invest in.”

But he warned that the community could not stand still, content with remaining in “flight formation”.

Although membership at its largest synagogue, Lauderdale Road in Maida Vale, had surged five years ago, now it was “at a plateau”.

A new range of children’s and teenage programmes at Lauderdale Road has been launched for the New Year, including a monthly explanatory service he will lead for parents and young people.

Rabbi Dweck also urged his audience to show support by attending synagogue at least once a month and a synagogue programme at least once every three months.

“I understand you might think ‘that’s not exactly what I want to do a Saturday morning’. “I’m asking, even so.

“We are working on developing the services; we’re working on the fact that you should want to get up on a Saturday morning and be with your friends in synagogue.”

He also made a plea for more volunteers, stressing in particular that no one was coming forward to join the lavadores — those who wash bodies before burial.

While the professional infrastructure of the community had been modernised, he warned that finta, membership dues, covered only 30 per cent of the running costs.

Pledging personally to do more on the pastoral side, Rabbi Dweck admitted he had not been adept at this when he arrived.

Above all, he stressed the importance of synagogues presenting a welcoming face.

The top hats that were still worn by its leadership were not an issue — as long as the wearers were smiling.