The young Rasofsky grew up on Chicago's mean streets, ultimately ignoring his father's desire for him to become a rabbi and his admonition that Jews do not resort to violence. Let the "goyim" be the fighters, Ross later recalled being told by his father. The trumbeniks, the murderers—we are the scholars. Ross's ambition in life was to become a Jewish teacher and a Talmudic scholar, but his life was changed forever when his father was shot dead resisting a robbery at his small grocery. Prostrate from grief, his mother Sarah suffered a nervous breakdown and his younger siblings—Ida, Sam and George—were placed in an orphanage or farmed out to other members of the extended family. Dov was left to his own devices at the age of 14.