Editing Openai/6874b524-4134-8013-b5e6-0601c853d841 (section)

=== A Jewish Family in Pre-Revolutionary Russia (1898–1908) ===

===== By 1898, the Gershovitz family had lived in St. Petersburg for over a decade. Moishe's mechanical shop—still modest, but now better equipped thanks to a handful of loyal army clients—occupied the same cramped rear courtyard off Liteyny Prospekt. His tools were imported German and French models, and his knowledge of gearing, pressure systems, and early electrics placed him in growing demand as Tsar Nicholas II flirted with industrial modernization. =====

His position, however, remained precarious. Jewish rights within the empire had only narrowed under Nicholas's reign. The May Laws remained in effect. Though the Gershovitzes lived outside the Pale, they held no illusions about their place in Russian society.

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By age 10, Israel had already read large portions of the Tanakh in Hebrew, as well as Pushkin and Lermontov in Russian. He was a solitary, thoughtful boy—drawn less to other children than to his father's disused textbooks and the clandestine pamphlets that sometimes appeared in the workshop via apprentices and army men.

His earliest attempts at writing—melancholy couplets about injustice and ice—were scribbled in the margins of his mother's recipe books.

Rosa, while wary of revolutionary zeal, did little to suppress his impulses. She saw in him the kind of intellect that could command words and perhaps wield them like Moishe wielded his tools.

====== By age 8, Yakob could replicate piano pieces by ear after a single hearing. His fingers were fast, and his sense of rhythm unsettlingly complex for a child. Moishe scraped together money for a battered upright pianino and, eventually, a tutor: Lev Polyakov, an Armenian-Jewish pianist and frustrated conservatory dropout with leftist leanings. ======

Polyakov introduced Yakob to Bach, Beethoven, and—scandalously—Scott Joplin. The latter he called “Negro genius from the new world,” and Yakob became obsessed.

His music, even early on, was wild—syncopated, dramatic, improvisational. His parents feared he might become too conspicuous.

====== Only a toddler during this decade, Artur watched the world quietly and preferred counting and organizing to stories or toys. He would line up Rosa’s kitchen spices by weight and alphabet, then scold her for rearranging them. ======

Rosa whispered to neighbors that he would be a lawyer or a clerk. Moishe was less sure. “He has the eyes of a man who will never let truth stand in the way of necessity.”

====== The baby of the family. Nicknamed "Franka" by her brothers. Born during the freezing December of that year, Rosa nearly died in childbirth, but survived thanks to a Jewish midwife from the outskirts of the city. Frankhezka was delicate and sickly in her infancy, but already her fingers stretched and flexed as if shaping invisible worlds in the air. ======

===== The Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905 was a humiliation for the empire. As the Russian fleet burned in the Tsushima Strait and prices rose in St. Petersburg, protests erupted. =====

In January 1905, Bloody Sunday sent a chill through the city. Moishe closed his shop for a week and hung a picture of the Tsar in the window—an act of defensive loyalty.

But at night, he let neighbors talk politics in hushed tones. Rosa kept the children away from the courtyard during these meetings, but Israel eavesdropped anyway. These overheard conversations became the first fuel for his ideological awakening.

===== Anti-Jewish riots surged again in 1905–1906, mostly outside St. Petersburg—but news traveled fast. Moishe joined a local self-defense circle, albeit passively. Rosa wrote letters to her relatives in Vilna, warning them to keep low. =====

Israel began copying anti-Tsarist slogans in a secret notebook. Yakob, meanwhile, learned to play revolutionary songs—then distort them into ragtime versions, to his mother’s horror and delight.

By 1907, Israel was attending a clandestine discussion circle run by a young Bolshevik medical student. He was only 11.

===== Despite the chaos, this was an era of cultural ferment. Rosa enrolled the boys in a Jewish community school, where they learned Torah alongside Russian literature. Frankhezka, still in infancy, listened to her brothers play and recite and was often rocked to sleep by Yakob’s half-finished compositions. =====

By 1908:
* Israel was beginning to write verses in a hybrid of Biblical Hebrew and Russian revolutionary idiom—angry, strange, and compelling.
* Yakob had been promised a letter of recommendation for the Moscow Conservatory's preparatory school.
* Artur was organizing a “library” out of discarded newspapers and string-bound notebooks.
* Franka had begun toddling to her brother Yakob's music and swaying in rhythm.

===== The first cracks in the Russian imperial edifice had appeared—and the Gershovitz family, despite their quiet lives, had begun to position themselves inside those fissures. =====

The century to come would demand that each of them choose between art and obedience, between revolution and survival.

And unbeknownst to them all, a strange new world was just a few years away—one shaped by guns, manifestos, and music that no empire could silence.

Would you like a short story or scene from this decade before we move into the 1908–1918 period? Or shall we keep advancing the timeline?