What to Write in a Rosh Hashanah Card

Rosh Hashanah cards are one of the few occasions where the traditional greeting is genuinely more useful than anything you could invent, so the sensible approach is to start there and then add yourself.

The greetings

Shanah tovah, pronounced roughly shah-NAH toe-VAH, means good year. It is the standard and it is never wrong.

Lshanah tovah umetukah extends it to for a good and sweet year, which is lovely and more specific, and it connects directly to the apples and honey that define the festival.

Lshanah tovah tikateivu is the more formal Ashkenazi version, meaning may you be inscribed for a good year in the Book of Life. It carries the image at the heart of the High Holy Days, that the coming year is being written during these days.

Chag sameach, happy festival, works too. So does the Yiddish gut yontiff. And so does a good new year in plain English.

Pick one. A card carrying three greetings reads as somebody who was not sure.

Sweetness is the theme

This is the thing to lean on and it is the reason these cards are easier to write than most.

The festival is built around apples dipped in honey for a sweet year, so wishing sweetness is traditional rather than saccharine. A wish for a good and sweet year is doing exactly what the occasion does, which means you can write it without feeling you have reached for a cliche.

Round challah carries the same idea in a different shape, shaped that way for the cycle of the year. A card that mentions either of those is on solid ground.

For close family and friends

Greeting, one specific line, one wish. As always the middle is the card.

The particular opportunity here is that the festival is about the year ahead and about reflection on the one behind, which gives you permission to say something more substantial than most cards allow.

For example: Shanah tovah. This has been a heavy year for you and I have thought about you more than I have said. Wishing you a sweet one, and I would like to be more use in it.

That last clause is the kind of thing this occasion actually invites, and it would sit oddly on a birthday card.

For colleagues

Two sentences, warm, no display of research.

Shanah tovah. Hope you have a good few days with your family.

If you manage somebody, the more useful thing than a card is asking in August which days they need. The High Holy Days span several weeks and the dates move, so a manager who has already checked has removed an awkward request. In 2026 Rosh Hashanah begins at sundown on 11 September and Yom Kippur at sundown on 20 September.

For someone who has had a difficult year

This is where the festival gives you something other occasions do not.

Rosh Hashanah is explicitly about the year that has passed and the one arriving, and about the possibility of doing better. That means a card can acknowledge a hard year directly without being morbid, because acknowledging it is what the occasion is for.

Something like: Shanah tovah. I know what this year took from you. Wishing you a sweeter one, and I will be around for it.

Compare that to a birthday card, where the same sentence would land heavily. Here it fits the frame, and it is often the card the person keeps.

Writing to somebody who is not Jewish

This comes up in mixed families and among close friends, and the answer is that the card belongs to whoever is observing.

If you are writing to a household where one person observes and another does not, address the greeting to the person it belongs to and the warmth to both. It sounds fussy written down and it is noticed by the person it is about.

The other direction, a Jewish friend writing to you, does not require a return card in kind. Answering warmly in your own words is enough.

The Yom Kippur mistake

Ten days after Rosh Hashanah comes Yom Kippur, and this is where well-meaning cards go wrong.

Happy Yom Kippur is not customary. TIME has covered exactly this point, noting the day is not a festive one. My Jewish Learning is careful to say it is not a sad day either and that warm greetings are appropriate, so the honest position is not that cheerfulness is forbidden. It is that happy is the wrong axis for a twenty-five hour fast day of reflection and atonement.

What to say instead: gmar chatimah tovah, meaning a good final sealing, which completes the inscription image from Rosh Hashanah. Or, in plain English, have an easy fast, which is widely used and genuinely kind.

If you only remember one thing from this guide, make it that one, because it is the mistake most often made by people trying to be thoughtful.

If the card is late

Cards routinely arrive during the ten days rather than before them, and that is fine but the wording should change.

Rather than pretending, use the position: I am late, which feels appropriate for a season about doing better. Wishing you a good year and an easy fast.

That reads as somebody who knows where in the calendar they are, which is worth more than punctuality.

For other cards, the what to write hub has the rest, and what to write in a Hanukkah card covers the December one. For what goes with the card, Rosh Hashanah gift ideas, and what to include in a personalized song is about choosing the detail that makes any message stick.