Listen to the Language of Truth 

While the Jewish world has been studying the works of the Sfas Emes for over a century, this second Rebbe of Gur is the only gadol of his stature about which no biography has yet been written, about whom we really know so little. Yet as we delved into a cache of old newspapers and notices 120 years after his passing, we got a glimpse into the Rebbe’s mesirus nefesh for his people living through frightening and threatening times

All over the Jewish world, rabbanim and lay people, scholars and balabatim, chassidim and Litvaks, continue to learn the holy works of the Sfas Emes, whose seforim — judging by the numerous editions and reprints — are among the most widely studied chassidic works in the Torah universe.

Yet even as Jews all over are marking 120 years since his passing on 5 Shevat, 1905, at age 57, most of them don’t really know much about his actual life. Many books have been written analyzing the teachings and philosophy of the Sfas Emes — Rav Yehudah Aryeh Leib Alter, the second rebbe of Gur — yet in all these years, there has not been written a single comprehensive biography of his personal history.

Maybe that’s why, whenever a new personal detail is uncovered, it’s immediately pounced on — like a recently discovered clipping from a Jewish newspaper written by the wife of the Sfas Emes, a call for help regarding an unidentified 20-year-old deaf-mute girl who’d been found in Warsaw and placed in a Christian institution where she refused to eat the nonkosher food. The note was a plea to the community for her parents to come forward and secure her release — and at the bottom was signed, “Yocheved Alter, Rebbetzin of Gur.”