Rabbi John Desmond Rayner CBE (30 May 1924 - 19 September 2005) was born in Berlin as Hans Sigismund Rahmer. He left Berlin in 1939 on one of the last Kindertransports. There were about 10,000 children on the train. Both his parents were killed in the Holocaust at Riga concentration camp as the records show they were both deported by train there. (They were Ferdinand Rahmer, who originated in Prague and Charlotte Landshut, whose mother came from Peru).
Between 1943 and 1947 Rayner served the British Army. In October 1947 he took up an open scholarship in modern languages that he had previously won at Emmanuel College, Cambridge 5 years earlier. In his second year he switched to Moral Science which comprised philosophy, logic, ethics and psychology and graduated in 1950 with First Class Honours. In his third year Rayner specialised in Hebrew, Aramaic, Syriac and Semitic Epigraphy. In his sixth year Rayner began working as a research student on a thesis about Maimonides' conception of Revelation.
Rayner was ordained in the Liberal Jewish Ministry on 21 June 1953 and served the South London Liberal Synagogue, in Streatham until 1957. He then worked at St John's Wood Liberal Synagogue until in 1963 he left for Cincinnati, Ohio, in the US with his wife Jane and three children, Jeremy, Ben and Susan. Rayner had been invited to the Hebrew Union College to take up a Graduate Fellowship. He returned to the UK to serve as Minister at the Liberal Jewish Synagogue in June 1965.
He wrote books on diverse topics including Halakha, Marriage, Ethics, Zionism, Theology and Jewish-Christian relations. He also gave a large number of sermons. He was voted one of the best preachers in Britain by Harpers and Queen Magazine in 1976. During the late 1960s and 1970s Rayner made several appearances on national television and radio.
He was an active participant in inter-faith work as co-chairman of the London Society of Jews and Christians. As a result of this work in 1993 he was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire.
His thought emphasizes the importance of ethics and the need for a more halakhic approach to progressive Judaism.
On Monday 19 September 2005 he died, at home, after a long illness.