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Dr. Elisabeth Hollender of Goethe University, Frankfurt/Main describes piyyut (Jewish liturgical poetry) from its origins to the modern era. Given the considerable passage of time, older liturgical poetry like the Psalms could only serve as conceptual models. A need for an aesthetic form of worship in the area between spontaneous and improvised prayer and the need for fixed texts led to the introduction of texts in verse and liturgical poetry.

In 1972, Ezra Fleischer presented a division of the history of the genre which remains valid today: pre-classical piyyut (up to the 6th. cent. CE); classical piyyut (late 6th to 7th cent. CE); post-classical piyyut (8th–10th cent. CE); Sephardic piyyut (from 10th cent. CE): divisible into Andalusian piyyut (10th–12th cent. CE), and piyyut from Christian Spain (13th–15th cent. CE), with variants on the margins of the Iberian Peninsula; the Italo-Ashkenazic school of piyyut (9th–14th cent. CE): divisible into south-Italian piyyut (9th cent,), Italian piyyut (10th–14th cent. CE), Ashkenazic piyyut (11th–14th cent. CE). Also worthy of mention are Romaniote piyyut (12th –14th cent. CE), Karaite liturgical poetry (12th–17th cent.), North-African piyyut (15th–19th cent.), as well as the poetic tradition in Yemen, and Hebrew poetry in the Ottoman Empire, used liturgically and para-liturgically. The new interest in the oriental piyyut evident in 21st-century Israel has led to texts being written down once again, so that contemporary piyyut is a new category.

Types of liturgical poetry are distinguished according to their function and place within worship, and as the genre has developed, formal rules for individual types have been subject to alteration. In morning worship, the »Hear O Israel« prayer is surrounded by three benedictions. The poetic embellishment of this complex is called yotser. For the various forms of ʿAmidah (the standing prayer) there are different forms of poetic embellishment. In the Middle Ages, additional moments in worship were identified that could be embellished with piyyutim. The long history of liturgical poetry may be divided into individual strands, which are often geographically linked. Criticism of piyyutim had an effect on liturgy in the modern era.