Clergy Sermons

Noah – Saving Humanity

At its most basic level, the story of Noah is the story of a person whose decisions saved humanity from destruction. It contains fundamental lessons:

We can choose to be righteous.

We can choose to save life.

Our decisions change everything in big and small ways.

I want to share with you the story of a man who, I imagine, most of us do not know — a man who saved the world in one moment through a courageous decision he made. History has forgotten him. I would like for us to tell his story so that future generations remember him. You and I are likely alive today because of a split-second decision made by Stanislav Petrov on September 27, 1983.

Petrov was a 44-year-old lieutenant colonel in the Soviet Air Defense Forces, stationed in a secret command center outside Moscow where the Soviet military monitored its early-warning satellites over the United States. He was a few hours into his shift when sirens went off. The computer warned that five nuclear missiles had been launched from an American base and were headed for the Soviet Union.

Keep in mind that the autumn of 1983 was a very tense moment in the Cold War. Only a few weeks earlier, Korean Airlines Flight 007 had been shot down by a Soviet jet, killing all 269 passengers. The Soviets feared that the downing of the plane would be avenged. A civil war raged in Angola, while Lebanon had disintegrated into multiple warring factions. President Reagan had rejected calls for freezing the arms race and had called the Soviet Union an “evil empire.” The Kremlin’s leader, Yuri V. Andropov, was obsessed by fears of an imminent American attack.

Amidst all of this, Colonel Petrov occupied a critical position in the decision-making chain. He was responsible for authenticating the report of incoming missiles to the Soviet military’s senior staff, who would then consult with Andropov about launching a retaliatory attack. Such an attack would have killed millions.

As the computer systems in front of him changed their alert status from “launch” to “missile strike,” and affirmed the accuracy of the satellite transmissions, Colonel Petrov had to decide what to do. The tracking devices indicated that detonation would occur in 25 minutes… each minute spent without taking action decreased the possibility of launching a successful retaliatory strike against the United States.

After five nerve-racking minutes — electronic maps and screens flashing as he held a phone in one hand and an intercom in the other, trying to absorb streams of incoming information — Colonel Petrov decided that the launch reports were probably a false alarm. As he later explained, it was a gut decision, at best a “50-50” guess, based on his distrust of the early-warning system and a hunch that if the U.S. had opted to launch a first strike, it would have fired scores upon scores of missiles rather than just five.

He was right — and here we are today. The false alarm was the result of a Soviet satellite mistaking the sun’s reflection off the tops of clouds for a missile launch. The computer program that was supposed to filter out such information had to be rewritten. Petrov was never given a medal or a commendation for his willingness to trust his instincts rather than a computer. Instead, he received a reprimand for not having recorded in his logbook all of the data that streamed past him in those unforgettable moments. It didn’t matter that he had a phone in one hand and the intercom in the other, so he didn’t have a third hand to log data. His act was buried and forgotten.

Both Noah and Stanislav Petrov teach us lessons about how easy it is for the world to be destroyed — and the impact one individual can have in saving humanity. While Noah could not save the world — the evil was too great — he preserved humanity moving forward by building an ark and saving every species of animal. Noah listened to his inner voice of faith and followed divine instruction — unlike everyone else in his generation. He saved humanity. Stanislav Petrov relied on his own instinct and judgment to make a decision that had the same impact — to preserve life and allow it to go forward.

Both men struggled after their heroic actions. As we know, Noah emerged from the ark and got drunk — perhaps all that time in the ark, the non-stop caring for animals, and the destruction of humanity he witnessed was too much for him. There was estrangement in his family — yet he and his family restarted humanity and received a divine covenant: God’s promise never to destroy humanity again.

Petrov left the military a year later and faded into obscurity — at one point, he was reduced to growing potatoes to sustain himself. It was only due to a memoir published fifteen years later by the retired commander of Soviet missile defense that we learned about his act of saving the world.

There are so many takeaways from these stories:

We possess the power to save lives through heroic action. It doesn’t have to be as dramatic as Noah or Stanislav Petrov — but we each possess that capacity if we follow our own moral compass and find courage in a moment. The American poet Edward Markham once wrote, “Choices are the hinges of destiny.” It is through telling these stories that we prepare ourselves for when those moments arise — and they will, in some way or another.

Let’s tell these stories. Let’s continue to study Noah and seek to learn from his righteousness and his mistakes. Let’s tell the story of Stanislav Petrov. He would have been forgotten were it not for those who began to tell his story. I only learned about him from his obituary in 2017, when he died at the age of 77. Might we erect a statue to honor him, or tell his story in history and social studies classes?

As I mourn my father, I hold on to a story of his response to me at a crucial crossroads in my life. His devotion and investment of time and energy, in a way that I could internalize, changed the trajectory of my life — and I am eternally grateful. Each of us has that capacity through how we respond when such moments arise unexpectedly.

As we think about the Noah story and its implications, we turn to the end — where God promises not to destroy humanity after the flood. That leaves the power and responsibility of preventing or causing destruction in our hands. The enduring message of the story of Noah is that we are now meant to prevent destruction and potential annihilation.

I believe Israel, with American support, acted with the imperative to save life in the destruction of Iranian nuclear facilities. When someone vows to destroy you and possesses the means to do so — you prevent calamity by acting against them.

Yet we are dancing on the edge of a volcano when it comes to the nuclear threat. Iran remains a danger. The number of nuclear-capable countries has increased since Stanislav Petrov’s heroism in 1983. Many activists are concerned that we are so caught up in the spiral of chaotic, frantic news that we are overlooking this existential threat.

In August, Spencer Cohen wrote an opinion piece called “My Generation’s Deadly Inheritance,” reflecting on activists seeking to raise awareness and create policy to decrease the current nuclear threat. The superpowers — the United States, China, and Russia — are spending billions to build new weapons systems. Putin issues threats to use them. Words like “limited nuclear war” are used — but such a war would create devastation and starvation that could kill hundreds of millions.

New agreements are needed as old ones unravel. I wonder if this is, in fact, an issue that could bring Americans across the political spectrum together — and if the stories of Noah and Stanislav Petrov remind us of our obligation to prevent the destruction of humanity. It is an area that merits our attention and activism.

We learn in Pirkei Avot, the Ethics of the Rabbis, in the name of Ben Azzai:
“Do not dismiss any person; do not underrate the importance of any thing — for there is no person who does not have his hour, and there is no thing without its place under the sun.”

This is addressed to you and me — so that we know that moments will arise when we, too, in our own ways, can walk in the ways of God, Noah, and Stanislav Petrov — acting to save humanity. May we embrace this sacred obligation.