There are no tragedies in Tanakh. Tragedy is when there is human suffering, with no reason to account for the suffering. Greek literature abounds in tragedy, as exemplified in Oedipus, who did commit incest, but didn’t know he was doing it. Lacking willful intent, his behavior does not meet any monotheistic notion of responsibility and accountability. If Oedipus were to come to a rabbi or a Jewish communal institution, we would take up a collection to get him some money to help with his therapy. The Greek gods, however, made his life miserable. That is what is tragic about Oedipus. He didn’t know what he was doing: he did not intend to sin, hence he did not sin. Nevertheless, he suffers.

There are no such tragedies in Tanakh. Whenever someone or some nation suffers, it is because they have sinned. And they are punished after being taught not to sin, and after prophets warned them that they would be punished if they continued to sin. People and nations are held accountable for their behavior, and suffering is the result of sin. There is no case of the righteous who suffer and the wicked who prosper in Tanakh.*

However, in one case there is massive, enduring, centuries-long suffering, with no sin that can account for it, and that is slavery in Mitzrayim. God tells Abraham in B’reisheet--Genesis 15, "Know this well: Your children will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, and they will be enslaved, and they will be tormented." When God says this, Abraham doesn’t have any children yet, let alone descendants who are a nation. Israel, a nation that does not yet exist, is in its very nativity promised to slavery and suffering as its first national experience. Thus, when Ya’akov goes down to Mitzrayim to be reunited with Yoseph and his children, the family of Ya’akov is but a clan of 70. This family grows into a nation in Mitzrayim through natural increase, commits no sins, and is enslaved by Pharaoh.

Why do they suffer? This is the only case of human suffering in Tanakh that is not punishment for sin. Why is Israel, as a nation, born in the midst of suffering? Slavery in Mitzrayim is her birthplace. The Tanakh does not record for the Jewish people a national golden age of the past to which they will be restored. As Virgil taught the Romans in the Aeneid, Aeneas established Rome so that it might restore many times over the glory that was Troy. There is no such promised restoration for the Jewish people, no narrative of a lost golden age. The founding experience of the Jewish people is suffering unaccounted for by sin. What is the meaning of national birth in the midst of slavery and suffering?

The Torah tells us that dozens of mitzvot have their rationale in the national experience of suffering and slavery, as in the mitzvot of Sh’mot 22-23. The same is true for the mitzvot of Vayikrah, Chapter 18-20. Just to cite a few examples, we are commanded by the mitzvot of the Torah not to cheat in business, not to loan money in usury, because we know better, because we were slaves in Mitzrayim. And the summary of all of these mitzvot explains the Torah’s meaning: "Do not oppress the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Mitzrayim." This is the origin of the ethical principle of Hillel the Elder: what is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. One cannot betray one’s very own experience, the suffering we knew at the moment of our national birth.