A prayer for Rosh Hashanah

Master of the World, today is Rosh Hashanah, and I stand before You at the start of a year whose course I do not know. Health, livelihood, joys and hardships: all of these are still revealed only before You, and I ask to stand before You today in sincerity.

I want to crown You king over me. Not only with my mouth, in the long prayers, but in life. Let You be the One I ask what to do, and not fear, not pride and not what people will say.

I know I was not who I wanted to be. And still I come to You as a son comes to his father. Give me and my household a year of good life.

Let me ask this year also for what I do not dare ask. Not only health and livelihood, but to be a better person, a better member of my family, a more faithful friend.

With the sound of the shofar, let me awaken. Let it break something in me of routine, of indifference, of the shell that thickened this year. Let me hear in it not only a sound but a call.

And I ask also for all Your people and for the world: a year of peace, of safety, of kindness. A year in which fewer people will cry.

And let me leave this festival not only with prayers I said, but with one resolution I will keep. And let this year be a year of joy, a year in which I will know how to begin again every time I fall.