Editing Marc Chagall (section)

===Early life===
[[File:ВІЦЕБСК. Музей Марка Шагала - VICIEBSK. Marc Chagall Museum..jpg|thumb|Marc Chagall's childhood home in [[Vitebsk]], Belarus. Currently site of the [[Marc Chagall Museum]].]]
[[File:Chagall parents.jpg|thumb|{{center|Marc Chagall, 1912, ''The Spoonful of Milk (La Cuillerée de lait)'', gouache on paper}}]]

Marc Chagall was born Moishe Shagal in 1887, into a Jewish family in [[Liozna]],<ref name="Harshav1"/> near the city of [[Vitebsk]], Belarus, then part of the [[Russian Empire]].<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WXI6K9vPLfkC&q=chagall+june+1887+julian&pg=PA65 |title=Binyāmîn Haršav, Marc Chagall, Barbara Harshav Marc Chagall and his times: a documentary narrative |isbn=9780804742146 |access-date=15 March 2012|last1=Harshav |first1=Benjamin |last2=Chagall |first2=Marc |last3=Harshav |first3=Barbara |year=2004 |publisher=Stanford University Press }}</ref> At the time of his birth, Vitebsk's population was about 66,000. Half of the population was Jewish.<ref name=Lewis/> A picturesque city of churches and synagogues, it was called "Russian [[Toledo, Spain|Toledo]]" by artist [[Ilya Repin]], after the cosmopolitan city of the former [[Spanish Empire]].<ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/28/books/chapters/chapter-chagall.html |title='Chagall' |newspaper=The New York Times |date=27 November 2008 |last1=Wullschlager |first1=Jackie |url-access=subscription}}</ref> Because the city was built mostly of wood, little of it survived years of occupation and destruction during World War II.

Chagall was the eldest of nine children. The family name, Shagal, is a variant of the name [[Segal]], which in a Jewish community was usually borne by a [[Levite|Levitic]] family.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://segal.org/name/index.html |title=Segal.org |publisher=Segal.org |date=22 May 2005 |access-date=15 March 2012}}</ref> His father, Khatskl (Zachar) Shagal, was employed by a herring merchant, and his mother, Feige-Ite, sold groceries from their home. His father worked hard, carrying heavy barrels, earning 20 roubles each month (the average wages across the Russian Empire was 13 roubles a month). Chagall wrote of those early years:

{{quote|Day after day, winter and summer, at six o'clock in the morning, my father got up and went off to the synagogue. There he said his usual prayer for some dead man or other. On his return he made ready the [[samovar]], drank some tea and went to work. Hellish work, the work of a galley-slave. Why try to hide it? How tell about it? No word will ever ease my father's lot... There was always plenty of butter and cheese on our table. Buttered bread, like an eternal symbol, was never out of my childish hands.<ref name=Chagall>Chagall, Marc. ''My Life'', Orion Press (1960)</ref>}}

One of the main sources of income for the Jewish population of the town was from the manufacture of clothing that was sold throughout the Russian Empire. They also made furniture and various agricultural tools.<ref name=Teshuva>Baal-Teshuva, Jacob. ''Marc Chagall'', Taschen (1998, 2008)</ref> From the late 18th century to the First World War, the Imperial Russian government confined Jews to living within the [[Pale of Settlement]], which included modern Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia, almost exactly corresponding to the territory of the [[Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth|Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth]] which was taken over by Imperial Russia in the late 18th century. That led to the creation of Jewish market-villages ([[shtetl]]s) throughout today's Eastern Europe, with their own markets, schools, hospitals, and other community institutions.<ref name=Goodman/>{{rp|14}}

Chagall wrote as a boy; "I felt at every step that I was a Jew—people made me feel it".<ref>{{cite book | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=mTadBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA69 | first=Stanley | last=Meisler | title=Shocking Paris: Soutine, Chagall and the Outsiders of Montparnasse | publisher=St. Martin's Press | date=14 April 2015 | page=69 | isbn=978-1466879270}}</ref>{{sfn|Moynahan|1992|p=129}} During a [[pogrom]], Chagall wrote that: "The street lamps are out. I feel panicky, especially in front of butchers' windows. There you can see calves that are still alive lying beside the butchers' hatchets and knives".{{sfn|Moynahan|1992|p=129}}<ref name="Chagall, Abbott">{{Cite book|url=http://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.75007|title=Marc Chagall My Life|first=Marc|last=Chagall|translator-first=Elizabeth|translator-last=Abbott|date=1960|publisher=The Orion Press|location=New York}}</ref> When asked by some ''pogromniks'' "Jew or not?", Chagall remembered thinking: "My pockets are empty, my fingers sensitive, my legs weak and they are out for blood. My death would be futile. I so wanted to live".{{sfn|Moynahan|1992|p=129}}<ref name="Chagall, Abbott" /> Chagall denied being a Jew, leading the ''pogromniks'' to shout "All right! Get along!"{{sfn|Moynahan|1992|p=129}}<ref name="Chagall, Abbott" />

Most of what is known about Chagall's early life has come from his autobiography, ''My Life''. In it, he described the major influence that the culture of Hasidic Judaism had on his life as an artist. Chagall related how he realised that the Jewish traditions in which he had grown up were fast disappearing and that he needed to document them. From the 1730s, Vitebsk itself had been a centre of that culture, with its teachings derived from the [[Kabbalah]]. Chagall scholar, Susan Tumarkin Goodman, describes the links and sources of his art to his early home:

{{quote|Chagall's art can be understood as the response to a situation that has long marked the history of Russian Jews. Though they were cultural innovators who made important contributions to the broader society, Jews were considered outsiders in a frequently hostile society ... Chagall himself was born of a family steeped in religious life; his parents were observant [[Hasidic Judaism|Hasidic]] Jews who found spiritual satisfaction in a life defined by their faith and organized by prayer.<ref name=Goodman>Goodman, Susan Tumarkin. ''Marc Chagall: Early Works From Russian Collections'', Third Millennium Publ. (2001)</ref>{{rp|14}}}}