Editing Mark Rothko (section)

== Childhood ==
Rothko was born in 1903 in Dvinsk (now [[Daugavpils]], Latvia), a ''[[shtetl]]'' (Jewish village) within the [[Pale of Settlement]] in the [[Russian Empire]]. His father, Jacob (Yakov) Rothkowitz, was a pharmacist and intellectual who initially provided his children with a secular and political, rather than religious, upbringing. According to Rothko, his [[Marxist schools of thought|Marxist]] father was "violently anti-religious".<ref name=":0">{{Cite news |last=Glueck |first=Grace |date=October 11, 2016 |title=A Newish Biography of Mark Rothko |work=Los Angeles Review of Books |url=https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/a-newish-biography-of-mark-rothko/#! |access-date=October 22, 2016}}</ref> In an environment where Jews were often blamed for many of the evils that befell Russia, Rothko's early childhood was plagued by fear.{{sfn|Breslin|1993}}{{sfn|Ashton|1983}}

Despite Jacob Rothkowitz's modest income, the family was highly educated ("We were a reading family", Rothko's sister recalled),{{sfn|Breslin|1993|p=14}} and Rothko spoke Lithuanian [[Yiddish]] ([[Yiddish dialects|Litvish]]), Hebrew and Russian.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Molcard |first=Eva Sarah |date=October 12, 2018 |title=Mark Rothko by the Numbers |url=https://www.sothebys.com/en/articles/mark-rothko-by-the-numbers |access-date=March 24, 2021 |website=Sotheby's}}</ref> Following his father's return to the [[Orthodox Judaism]] of his own youth, Rothko, the youngest of four siblings, was sent to the [[cheder]] at age five, where he studied the [[Talmud]], although his elder siblings had been educated in the public school system.{{sfn|Breslin|1993|p=18–42}}