I thought of another idea. Good and evil exist in the world in order to make human free choice possible. If there were no good and evil, choice would have no meaning (like the parable you once mentioned about elections in Switzerland). Choice is expressed in two ways: “turn from evil” (passivity = less relevant to natural evil), and “do good” (activity). In order for the “do good” aspect to have meaning, bad things have to happen when we are passive, and only our active choices prevent those bad things (diseases, disasters, etc.). The activity here is expressed, for example, in medical research or in programs like National Outline Plan 38, which are meant to reinforce the structure of old buildings against earthquakes.

Rabbi, if so, then why did God harden Pharaoh’s heart and afterward take vengeance on him even though He prevented him from having free choice? And why did He punish him and all the Egyptians as well?

It is necessary to distinguish between God’s attributes of compassion and grace, and His attributes of patience, abundant kindness, and truth.
The Holy One, blessed be He, truly is patient and abundant in kindness and truth, but when several generations do not stop sinning—He deals with them just like the law of the stubborn and rebellious son: from the wicked comes forth / will come forth wickedness. And even so, the Holy One, blessed be He, pays good reward also to the children’s children and their descendants and offspring onward for dozens of generations—where do you find such a thing?
The parable for this is that we all (the Jews) are in one boat—one person sins (makes a hole in the boat—we all drown), and therefore as a society, with one people and one heart, we need to denounce this evil the way one removes leaven from all our domains—that is the secret. But first of all each person needs to deal with himself and his family, and afterward with his friends and surroundings. And this prevents disasters that literally harm people. As we saw in the plagues of Egypt, not a single Jew was harmed at all. Even though there were such great disasters throughout Egypt, yet against the children of Israel not a dog sharpened its tongue.

The Holocaust is a disaster whose full measure came upon us—if we had understood the hint on our own, we would have been redeemed from Adolf Hitler’s Final Solution, but sadly we had to absorb tremendous human catastrophe, millions of Jews from all over the world, to teach you that there is “something” about us that the Holy One, blessed be He, loathes, and we must discover it and do His will so that we do not, Heaven forbid, suffer another Holocaust. And that is the only reason why we must remember the horrifying Holocaust disaster not only one day a year but every single day. To awaken ourselves and do His blessed will, and if you see that everyone is sinning, then guard and cleanse your house and your borders from the “leaven” (it is not enough to sell it, but to remove it), and then you will not be harmed, Heaven forbid, by the next disaster. And the hint to this is: “And I will cause it to rain upon one city, and upon another city I will not cause it to rain; one portion shall be rained upon, and the portion upon which it does not rain shall wither” (Amos 7).

There is a story nowadays that says that Hitler brought the secular Jews and the Haredi Jews closer together and united them. As is known from the taxi story, in short:
A certain rabbi returned from abroad and got into a taxi. When he got in he said, “Hello, my brother,” to the “secular” driver. The driver said: “The Rabbi should forgive me, but we can’t really be brothers—you’re religious and I’m secular.” The rabbi answered: “I know, but my teacher taught me that we are brothers.” The driver asked: “Who is that teacher?” The rabbi answered: “Adolf Hitler.”

Conclusion—not enough that we be brothers—we need to be united. Each person should destroy the “secularism” within himself, and thus we will be brothers on the one hand and children of God on the other.

Oren,
Maybe. But it still leaves an uncomfortable feeling, because some suffer so that others can have choice. Did Zigud sin and Tuvia get flogged?
By the way, it seems to me that medical research is not really a choice of good, but a positive and beneficial action done for a general interest. Maybe there is here a choice of good by the collective. The individuals do it for financial, intellectual interests, etc.

Moshe,
Pharaoh was punished for what he did. The hardening of his heart was perhaps to teach us something, but that is not the reason for the punishment.

As for Hitler, if you think Hitler defines who is a Jew, I disagree with you. By the way, he also killed Roma and homosexuals, and many more Russians still (some twenty million), and others. These are demagogic and nonsensical statements.

Right, Hitler killed them in the war, but the Jews he killed in the Holocaust.
I definitely accept your reasoning about Pharaoh being punished, but why were they punished along with him? I don’t understand from the Torah how the children of Israel suddenly became slaves. So what if a new king arose in Egypt—they were free people.

Regarding the issue that some people suffer, I think most of us suffer from natural evil to one degree or another and at some point in life, whether it is various diseases, fires, different weather hazards, etc. Even if there is an egoistic/social interest in doing medical research, usually that comes in addition to an altruistic element. For example, I have friends who work in high-tech who preferred to work in the biomedical field even when it is less profitable, because they think it contributes more to society than a faster iPhone. And sometimes there are also wealthy private individuals who fund medical research or medical equipment from their own money. That is, if there were no diseases (natural evil), people would not face the dilemma of whether to sacrifice something of themselves (time, money, comfort) in order to cure those diseases. (By the way, caring for a sick relative or friend is also a similar dilemma.)

In other words, we cannot bestow kindness on others unless they have some kind of need (medical, financial, emotional, etc.). If there were no needs and troubles, the choice to do acts of kindness would be meaningless. And gratitude in return for those kindnesses would also be meaningless.

Moshe, the Roma and homosexuals were killed in the Holocaust, not in the war. But this is an irrelevant discussion. I have no interest in defining my identity by the degree of victimhood and/or by Nazi law.

Oren, it still doesn’t seem quite right. To cause many people to suffer so that others can bestow kindness on them. But perhaps it is not right to judge the considerations of the Holy One, blessed be He, as if they were the considerations of human beings in relation to other human beings.

Continuing this discussion, after reading this week’s Torah portion (Eikev), two points came up there that may explain the reason for evil:

1. Suffering makes meaningful choice possible, because choice without costs is meaningless (“in order to afflict you and in order to test you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not”).

2. Suffering and evil are educational tools that make it possible to straighten a person out for his own good and for the good of his surroundings (“And you shall know in your heart that as a man chastises his son, so the Lord your God chastises you”).

1-2. That would be true if there were a clear correlation between suffering and evil. But “the righteous person who suffers and the wicked person who prospers” neutralizes the possibility of being straightened out by suffering and of factoring it into our choices.

What I meant here is that the terms suffering and evil are interchangeable terms (that is, they have the same meaning).
I didn’t quite understand what you are claiming. What is the difficulty from “the righteous person who suffers and the wicked person who prospers” regarding my suggestion?

If there is no correlation between doing evil and suffering, then how will suffering straighten me out? And how will I factor it into my choices? A person can choose the good and suffer, so why would suffering lead him to choose the good?

What I meant is that the very existence of suffering (in its various forms, such as physical pain, loss, sadness, fear, shame, guilt, etc.) is first and foremost a negative psychological experience of the soul. The very existence of suffering allows an educator to use it for the future benefit of the pupil (and of his surroundings). If it were impossible to afflict the pupil in any way, it would be impossible to educate him effectively. For example, if soldiers did not suffer from harassment and pointless runarounds, it would be impossible to use those runarounds as an educational tool for soldiers. This is expressed in the verse: “As a man chastises his son, so the Lord your God chastises you.”

Regarding choice, when a person is in a dilemma between a good option and a bad one, and choosing the good option will cause him mental/physical suffering or deprive him of mental/physical pleasure, and nevertheless he chooses the good option—only then does his choice have meaning. If there were no cost to choosing the good (the cost being expressed in suffering or prevention of happiness), then his choice would have no meaning. Similarly, when choosing a good option prevents suffering for others, it has greater value; and when choosing a bad option causes suffering to others, it too has greater value (negative value) in comparison to an alternative reality in which suffering does not exist. For example, if hunger were not bound up with suffering, then the fact that a person gave charity to the poor so they could eat would have less value compared to a reality in which hunger involves suffering, and then the charity also prevents the poor from suffering. Or if rape did not cause suffering to the woman, then the fact that someone decided to rape a woman would have less negative value than in a reality in which rape involves suffering for the victim.

So you are talking about the capacity to suffer and not about actual suffering. The question is not why soldiers who are given pointless runarounds suffer, but why they are given those runarounds.

Also in the context of choice, not every choice of good carries a cost. Sometimes it is דווקא the choice of evil that carries a cost.

In general, it seems to me that these are side benefits and rather marginal ones of suffering in the world. In my assessment, there is no real explanation here.

The basic condition for the existence of suffering is the ability to experience it. If the soldiers do not experience suffering because of the runarounds, then the question why they are given those runarounds is automatically less interesting; it is similar to asking why soldiers shower דווקא in the evening and not in the morning (that is, there is no theological difficulty here).

As for choosing evil when it has a cost, on the contrary: when someone chooses a bad option despite its severe costs, that sharpens the evil in his choice (the negative value of the choice). In other words, the very existence of costs of suffering makes it possible to charge our choices with negative or positive value, depending on the case.

By the way, I did not presume to argue that these are the only reasons for the existence of suffering. I assume there are several more that we can think of, and some that we cannot even think of. But even somewhat marginal explanations are enough to begin to understand why suffering exists.

Clearly the ability to experience suffering is a condition, but the question is not about the condition but about the suffering itself.
I accept that there is a bit of an explanation here.

Actually, it seems to me that the experience of suffering is suffering itself, and all the rest are external triggers that activate it. For example, when a child touches a hot pot, a chain of physical processes is created that ends in an experience of suffering. The external trigger (touching a hot pot) is the condition for suffering, and the experience is the suffering itself.

That is semantics that are not important to our discussion. The question is why people suffer. In order for them to suffer (for example, let’s take pain), two conditions are needed: a nervous system (which creates pain) and the cause of the pain. The question is why the bottom line exists in the world, and therefore explaining one of the conditions is not enough.

I am trying to argue that suffering (and all its causes = nervous system + cause of pain) is a means to a higher goal, such as educating the person and increasing the difficulty of a person when facing tests.