Sefat Emet (Judah Leib Alter)

The grandson of Isaac Meir Alter, the first rebbe of Ger (Góra Kalwaria, Poland), Judah Leib Alter was raised by his grandfather, Isaac Meir, after being orphaned as an infant. His grandfather, also known as the .idushei ha-Rim, drew on the teachings of Menachem Mendel, the Kotzker rebbe (1787–1859), in teaching his grandson. When his grandfather died in 1866, Judah Leib was acknowledged as the next rebbe of the thousands of Ger Hasidim. However, for several years he declined the role in order to study under .anokh Heynekh Levin (1798–1870), who took up the mantle of rebbe; Judah Leib accepted the position in turn after Levin’s death in 1870. Over the next three decades, Judah Leib came to command the largest following of Hasidim in Russian Poland, and he emerged as one of the leading voices of Hasidic and Orthodox thought of the modern era. His weekly commentaries on Torah, delivered orally to his followers as homilies and then transcribed, spoke to the problem of maintaining Hasidic piety and religious faith in the face of modernity's moral challenges, urbanization, and social change. The homilies were compiled in the five-volume Sefat emet (in Ashkenazic pronuncation, Sfas emes), and Alter became known by the title of this work, which enjoyed wide influence. Thousands of his followers were conscripted to the tsar's military during the Russo-Japanese War, causing him great distress. He died several months before the end of that war.