December 26, 2011 | 9:05 am

“What a Wonderful World” with David Attenborough

Posted by Rabbi John Rosove

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As the year 2011 comes to a blessed close, the lyrics of “What a Wonderful World” originally set to music by the great Louis Armstrong (lyrics: George David Weiss, George Douglas, and Bog Thiele) has been reinterpreted by David Attenborough on the BBC with exquisite nature photography -  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8WHKRzkCOY

“I see trees of green, red roses too
I see them bloom for me and you
And I think to myself what a wonderful world.

I see skies of blue and clouds of white
The bright blessed day, the dark sacred night
And I think to myself what a wonderful world.

The colors of the rainbow so pretty in the sky
Are also on the faces of people going by
I see friends shaking hands saying how do you do
They’re really saying I love you.

I hear babies crying, I watch them grow
They’ll learn much more than I’ll never know
And I think to myself what a wonderful world
Yes I think to myself what a wonderful world.”

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel (zal), filled with wonder always, put it this way:

“Our radical amazement responds to the mystery, but does not produce it. You and I have not invented the grandeur of the sky nor endowed [hu]man[kind] with the mystery of birth and death. We do not create the ineffable, we encounter it.

The awareness of the ineffable is that with which our search must begin…The search of reason ends at the shore of the known; on the immense expanse beyond it only the sense of the ineffable can glide…reason cannot go beyond the shore, and the sense of the ineffable is out of place where we measure, where we weigh.”

May your soul rejoice and your heart sing!
L’shanah tovah chiloni
Rabbi John Rosove