Magonet served on the rabbinic staff at West London Synagogue of British Jews. He has been part of the team constructing the new edition of the British Reform Prayer Book.
His 1992 book, Bible Lives, presented a series of pen portraits of figures from the Hebrew Bible, both major and (particularly) minor. Originally written for the Jewish Chronicle, they aimed to show that the Bible could still be a 'living' source of deep insight into human character.[4] Magonet has described in the book's introduction the challenge of bringing to 'centre stage' characters like Shiphrah, Puah, Palti ben Laish and Ritzpah with only minimal information about them available from the text, and expressed the hope that readers would themselves go back to the texts to check out or challenge his interpretations.[5]
