Isaiah Berlin: A Life — 2: Riga

1. 1. Isaiah Berlin was born on 6 June 1909 in Riga, with a permanent left arm injury from forceps delivery.
2. 2. Berlin's mother, Mussa Marie, had a stillborn daughter in 1907 and was told she should never have children again, making Isaiah a longed-for miracle.
3. 3. Berlin's mother was deeply moved by the biblical story of Hannah, a barren woman who prayed for a son, and Berlin would cry when recalling those verses.
4. 4. Riga in 1909 was a Hanseatic trading town with German as the language of culture and commerce, under Russian imperial administration.
5. 5. Riga's social pyramid placed Baltic German barons at the top, followed by German merchants, Jewish merchants, Jewish artisans in the ghetto, and Latvians at the bottom.
6. 6. Riga lay outside the Pale of Settlement, so Jews there were exempt from many tsarist restrictions, and the Berlin family, as Merchants of the First Guild, had honorary citizenship.
7. 7. Berlin's father Mendel wrote a memoir in 1946 evoking his pious Jewish upbringing in Vitebsk, but Isaiah dismissed it as a sentimental return to roots.
8. 8. Berlin's adoptive great-grandfather, Isaiah Berlin senior (Shaya), was a wealthy Hasidic timber merchant who broke the Baltic German monopoly on the export trade.
9. 9. Berlin was named after his adoptive great-grandfather Shaya, a member of the Lubavich Hasidic sect and a descendant of the sect's founder.
10. 10. Berlin's parents doted on him as an only child, and he developed a taste for being spoiled, dominating the household with his volubility.
11. 11. At age three, Berlin refused to kiss the hand of the matriarch Chayetta Berlin, asserting his will over his parents' shame.
12. 12. Berlin pondered why, despite receiving full parental love, he felt his achievements were of little value, though this self-doubt was partly a strategy of self-deprecation.