Berakhot 092

Rabbi El'azar [ben-Pedat]: May it be Your pleasure, Adonai our God, to make our fate to be [one of] love, fraternity, peace and friendship; enlarge our borders with students and make our latter end be a successful one of hope; make our lot paradise [Gan Eden], and afford us a good friend and a good inclination in Your world. May we rise early to discover that our heart's desire is to be in awe of Your Name. May You grant us for our benefit a feeling of contentment.

Rabbi Yoĥanan: May it be Your pleasure, Adonai our God, to take note of our shame and to observe our wrongfulness, and to dress Yourself with Your mercy, cover Yourself with Your power, enrobe Yourself with Your kindness, and to gird Yourself with Your gracefulness Summon up Your characteristics of goodness and self-effacement.

Rabbi Zeira: May it be Your pleasure, Adonai our God, that we sin and [have to] be ashamed [of ourselves] no more than our parents.

Rabbi Ĥiyya: May it be Your pleasure, Adonai our God, that Your Torah be our livelihood and that our hearts be not saddened nor our eyes dimmed [by distress].

Rav [Abba ben-Aivo]: May it be Your pleasure, Adonai our God, that You grant us long life, a life of peace, a life of good, a life of blessing, a life of [sufficient] income, a life of physical activity, a sin-fearing life, a life without shame, a life of wealth and respect, a life in which we shall be possessed of a love of Torah and a fear of Heaven, a life in which You will grant our heart's desire for our benefit. [This personal prayer was adopted by Ashkenazi tradition to be recited when blessing the next month – SR]

Rabbi [Yehudah the President of the Sanhedrin]: May it be Your pleasure, Adonai our God and God of our ancestors, to save us from brazen people and from brazenness [on our own part], from a bad person and a bad incident, from the evil inclination, from a bad colleague, a bad neighbour, from satanic destructiveness, from a difficult [legal] case and from a difficult litigant – be they Jewish or not.

Rav Safra: May it be Your pleasure, Adonai our God, to set peace in Your heavenly entourage and in Your earthly entourage – between the students who study Your Torah – whether they are studying Torah for altruistic reasons or otherwise. And may it be Your pleasure that those who are not studying Torah for altruistic reasons come to do so for altruistic reasons.

Rav Hamnuna: May it be Your pleasure, Adonai our God, to set us in a ray of light and not to set us in a dark corner, and that our hearts be not saddened nor our eyes dimmed [by distress].

Rabbi Alexandri: Sovereign of the Worlds, You know full well that it is our desire to do Your pleasure; so what prevents us? – the leaven in the dough [our baser inclinations] and our subservience to the gentile world. So may it be Your pleasure to rescue us from their clutches so that we once again do Your pleasure with a perfect heart.

Rava: My God, before I was formed I was of no value; now that I have been formed it is as if I had not been! I am but dust while alive, so obviously more so after I die. Here I am before You, a vessel of shame. May it be Your pleasure, Adonai my God, that I sin no more; and what I have already sinned before You please erase in Your great mercy – but not through suffering or severe illness. [This personal devotion was selected in some rites as an addition to the Amidah on Yom Kippur. The Gemara [Berakhot 17a] says that Rav Hamnuna used this text as his personal confession on Yom Kippur, in place of the confession we call "Ashamnu".]