Prayer for the Welfare of the State of Israel the recitation of this prayer, and to a lesser extent the Prayer for the Welfare of the Soldiers of the IDF, has become one of the differences delineating the Haredim from the Religious Zionists. Ashkenazi Jews recite the prayer between the recitation of the haftarah and the returning of the Torah scroll(s) to the Holy Ark. Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews, however, usually recite it at the time when the Torah scroll(s) are taken out of the Ark. At these respective points, it was common practice throughout the years to add various blessings, including the Blessing for the Ruler of the
Sephardi Hebrew of Hebrew in Mishnaic times (1st-2nd centuries), with the Sephardi pronunciation being derived from Judaean and the Ashkenazi from Galilean. The theory is supported by the fact that Ashkenazi Hebrew, like Samaritan Hebrew, has lost the distinct sounds of many of the guttural letters, and there are references in the Talmud to that as a feature of Galilean speech. Idelsohn ascribes the Ashkenazi (and, on his theory, Galilean) pronunciation of qamats gadol as to the influence of Phoenician: see Canaanite shift. During the Masoretes (8th-10th centuries), there were three distinct notations for denoting vowels and other details of pronunciation in