Of the various books and numerous articles that have appeared over my name in the course of twenty-three years of scholarly publication, none has given me so much satisfaction in its completion as the volume here being prefaced. It has been my ambition for a number of years to offer such an overview of Jewish liturgical history and, given my many other commitments, it has been no easy task to find the time and energy to effect its realisation. Now that the final touches have been put to the text submitted to Cambridge University Press a few months ago, I can only express the hope that the study proves as useful and acceptable to the student, non-specialist and scholar in its reading as it has proved absorbing and challenging to me in its composition.

Some earlier versions of sections of the book have appeared in a number of publications and I welcome the opportunity of thanking the editors and publishers for kindly granting their permission to incorporate that material here. The first half of chapter 1 appeared as 'Jewish Liturgical Research: Past, Present and Future' in the Journal of Jewish Studies 34 (1983), pp. 161-70, edited by Geza Vermes and published by the Oxford Centre for Postgraduate Hebrew Studies; an earlier draft of chapter 3 was submitted to Cambridge University Press in December 1986 and will appear in the third volume of the Cambridge History of Judaism edited by Louis Finkelstein and W. D. Davies; a substantial proportion of chapter 4 was published in Studia Liturgica 15 (1982-3), pp. 188-206, now edited by Paul Bradshaw for Societas Liturgica.