His father worked as a bailiff, but was also a Jewish scholar and fulfilled the functions of a prayer leader in the area where the Morgensterns lived at that time.
He also learned ancient Hebrew in order to understand religious texts, and sometimes went to Polish, sometimes Ukrainian village schools, in which he was also taught German.
He did not however take after his father in all things; after he completed his basic education he went to the grammar school in Tarnopol, a regional cultural centre at the time.
During this period he became an atheist, but later rediscovered his religion, which strongly influenced his work: "But I stood before a lectern, on which a neglected prayer-book lay.
[1] In March 1938, at the time of the Anschluss, he fled Vienna via France (where he was repeatedly detained as a "foreign enemy") to New York in 1941, where he lived until his death in 1976.