ASIMOV, Moses Jacob

Notes:

Moishe was a scholar and a cantor during the High Holy days in Petrovichi.
Judah (Jack) Asimov, 1896-1969, remembers his great-great uncle as very old and half blind, yet still wanting to sing--and not believing that anyone could sing better than he in the old shul. He was retired on a 10-ruble a year pension.
From "In Memory Yet Green," the first autobiography of Isaac Asimov: "As for Abraham Ber's younger brother, Moses Jacob Asimov, he, too, lived into my father's lifetime. In fact, he outlived his older brother, and my father remembers him when 'he was very old and half blind.' He, too, was a scholar, of course, and for many years he was a cantor at the town synagogue.
"'When I remember him," said my father, "he was already on a pension of 10 rubles a year, but if they allowed him, he would still perform as a cantor. He couldn't believe that anyone could perform better than he could.'"
"In fact [writes Isaac] it must be that my father told me about this great-granduncle of his, for I distinctly remember him telling me, when I was young, of a very old blind man who had once been a cantor and who continued to insist on singinn appropriate occasions even though his voice had altogether decayed. He would sing in his quavering, cracked voice, and out of respect for his age, no one would stop him, even though the sound was horrible enough to scrape the wallpaper off the walls.
"One time, though, Gentiles were present, and the embarrassment then became too keen. Someone approached the old man and said, 'Moses Jacob, please stop. There are Gentiles present, and it is not fitting.'
"Whereupon Moses Jacob turned his old blind eyes this way and that and said, 'Gentiles? Gentiles? I see no Gentiles,' and kept on singing."

Writes Isaac: "What really gives me pause about this story...is that I fully intend to continue writing as long as I live, and I wonder if I, like my great-great-granduncle, Moses Jacob, will continue to do so long after senility has deprived me of any writing ability, under the delusion that I can still do it. I have visions of my editors drawing straws to see who gets to tell me that I'm embarrassing the Gentiles.
"Well, what the heck! Great-great-granduncle didn't listen, and I won't, either."

Moses married MICHELEVA, Ita about 1850 in Russia. Ita was born in 1830 in Russia. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]