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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 |accessdate=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 but earning only 20 roubles each month (the average wages across the Russian Empire being 13 roubles a month). Chagall would later include fish motifs "out of respect for his father", writes Chagall biographer, [[Jacob Baal-Teshuva]]. Chagall wrote of these 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 of the Jewish population of the town was from the manufacture of clothing that was sold throughout Russia. 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 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]] recently taken over by Imperial Russia. This caused 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}}
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