Al Gore…Following in Noah’s Footsteps
Sermon, October 12, 2007
Rabbi Bruce Kadden

It is quite appropriate that former Vice President Al Gore, along with the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, won the Nobel Peace Prize in the week that we are reading parashat Noah, the Torah portion about Noah’s ark.  For Noah was the first environmentalist.  Yes, an environmentalist. 

Faced with an impending ecological crisis, a deluge that would threaten all life, he acted decisively and built an ark that would contain not only his family, but two of every endangered species.

Now, I know what you are thinking.  Noah was told by God what he needed to do.  Well, you know what?  Noah could have said no.  Noah could have looked the other way.  Noah could have ignored God’s message and gone about his business. 

You may recall how the famous theologian Bill Cosby envisioned the conversation between Noah and God.

[Bill Cosby’s Noah]

Noah might have been tempted to ignore God, but instead he followed God’s directions, built the ark, gathered the animals and assured the survival of life on our planet.

I don’t know that Al Gore heard any Divine voices or received any explicit revelation about the dangers of global warning and the future of the earth.  Yet, he clearly realizes that there is a religious dimension to his work.  In accepting the Nobel Prize, he said, "We face a true planetary emergency. The climate crisis is not a political issue; it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity."

After losing the bitterly contested 2000 presidential election, Gore could have left everything behind; instead, he obviously felt called to take the leadership in which indeed may be the greatest threat to our planet since the ancient flood. 

At the end of the summer, I had the opportunity to hike Mt. Adams in southern Washington with the American Leadership Forum class.  Toward the top of the mountain is a glacier, which we could see from a distance.  I asked Bill Proudman, who led our group and has taken groups hiking here for many years about it.  He shared with us how, indeed, it has been shrinking every year. 

Those of us who have seen Gore’s academy award winning documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” learned that it is scenario that is being replicated throughout the planet as global warming has led to shrinking glaciers and the melting of the polar ice cap, as well as record temperatures in many parts of the world. 

His efforts, along with those of the U.N. panel should serve as a wake-up call that unless we do something about what is happening we risk devastating consequences to our planet, that at the very least will require significant changes in how we lead our lives and could require significant population shifts in order to survive extreme temperatures.

I am still young enough to remember the first earth day, when I was in high school; walking to school instead of taking the bus, recycling newspapers, just beginning to become aware of air and water pollution.  We have come a long way since then.  For most of us recycling is second nature and our water and air has for the most part improved. 

But we still have a long way to go.  There is more that each of us can do to improve our environment; and there is much more that our government can do to address this crisis.

In this week’s portion we are told that, “Noah was a righteous man; he was blameless in his generation.”  The rabbis, who always examine the text with a fine-toothed comb, were curious why it included the phrase “in his generation,” which seems to be superfluous.

Here is how the great medieval biblical commentator Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki, known as Rashi, summarizes the rabbinic debate about this phrase:  “Some of our rabbis explain it to his credit…others, however, explain it to his discredit.”

The rabbis who explain it to his credit see the text saying:  Noah was righteous even “in his generation” that was full of corruption and lawlessness and evil; had he lived in a generation of righteous people, he would have been even more righteous.

But the rabbis who explain it to his discredit interpret the text differently.  They say that Noah may have been righteous compared to others in his own generation who were corrupt and evil; had he, however, lived at another time, in the generation of Abraham, for example, he would not have been considered special.

There are some who might think that Al Gore is not so special.  He is living at a time where lots of people are working to improve the environment and trying to do something about global warming.  I, however, think that he is special and deserves this great honor; for he has brought this crisis front and center where it belongs.

This award, however, will only be meaningful if it leads to action.  According to an article about the issue, “Climate change has moved high on the international agenda this year. The U.N. climate panel has been releasing reports, talks on a replacement for the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on climate are set to resume and on Europe's northern fringe, where the awards committee works, there is growing concern about the melting Arctic.”

Let us hope and pray that we take needed steps to deal with this threat before its too late, so that unlike the generation of Noah we do not have to deal with the devastating consequences that could threaten our planet.

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