My Yom Kippur prayer

The Yesh Atid leader asks simply for the strength to speak differently

Our God and God of our forefathers, the One Who has loved us and desired us, please give us the strength to speak differently.

That’s it. That is the entire prayer that I set before You.

People tend to underestimate the power of words, Master of the World, but not You. The Ten Commandments that You engraved on the Tablets of the Covenant total just 172 words, but they changed the world more than all the guns and planes combined.

Give us, Lord our God, the ability to define ourselves by the question of what we are for and not what we are against. What we love, and not who we hate. What we want to create, not what we want to destroy. What we want to elevate, not who we want to humiliate and crush. Because cynics have not built anything in this world – only the innocent, only those who believe in something have built.

Help us, Heavenly Father, to change the interface between us because it has changed to anger, hate, and full of complaints. We need You to re-direct us to find the right words, so that they create the opportunity for us to work together for this place and life within it.

We have many challenges, our God, and we will not be able to withstand them if we continue to weaken ourselves from within.

Please God lead us this year, if possible, without “blood, fire and pillars of smoke,” because we had enough of that this year in what was once called “the place called Hope.” And there is only one road to lead us to that place – the road we construct together.

Yair Lapid is Israel’s finance minister and the chairman of the Yesh Aid party.