“Grant peace, goodness and abundance, grace and kindness and compassion to us and all of Israel, Your nation.” Enumerated here are the ingredients necessary for achieving true and lasting internal and external peace: o “Goodness.” The word tov first appears in the Torah inside the creation story. After God completes His work on each of the seven days, the Torah states, “And God saw that it was good.” “Good,” according to the Torah, means that a destiny has been fulfilled. For example, God said, “Let there be light.” And the Torah then records, “And there was light,” and then “God saw it was good,” meaning the light was what it was supposed to be. Therefore, we see that one of the ingredients of inner peace is to feel that we are who we are supposed to be. o “Abundance.” Brachah literally means “blessing,” but it also means “abundance” and suggests growth. Even though we feel good when we are who we are supposed to be, we also need to feel that we are growing and enjoying increased dynamism and novelty in our lives. o “Grace.” Chen is a magnetic attraction people feel towards us when they can see themselves within us and feel that we represent them. Yosef is described in the Torah as having much chen. Except for his brothers, everyone in Yosef’s life trusted him because they felt that he could represent their best interests. His spontaneous and inclusive disposition charmed even Pharaoh, the ruler of Egypt, who entrusted Yosef to act on his behalf. o “Kindness and compassion.” An example of chesed (“kindness”) is when we take a friend out to dinner for no reason other than to simply be nice. Rachamim (“compassion”), however, is when we take a friend out to dinner even though he was nasty to us the day before. Rachamim is an expression of unconditional love. It is manifest when we overcome judgment and demonstrate love despite having good reasons not to. To sum it up, our final request is for peace—within our selves and with others. The ingredients are: personal fulfillment, being who we are suppose to be and yet also enjoying continual growth, radiating inclusiveness so that people can see themselves in us and feel a natural connection and trust to us as we exude kindness and compassion. We ask that peace and all that it encompasses comes “to us and all of Israel, Your nation.”