Having lived through destruction and rebuilding, poverty and plenty, war and peace, Reb Aryeh Alter — a scion of Gerrer royalty — is a walking chronicle of modern history and a window into the lives of five Gerrer Rebbes.
Those who knew Rav Moshe Betzalel understood the message underlying the reprimand. It was precisely because he cared so deeply for his family that he was so particular about every detail of their chinuch and value system. In fact, he even had his grandchildren switch schools based on his investigations from afar — Aryeh was transferred from his original cheder to Chayei Olam, and Miriam was brought back to Poland for a year to study in a Bais Yaakov there.
With the outbreak of World War II, all that changed. Most of the Alter family was murdered, including Rav Moshe Betzalel, who was slated to succeed his brother, the Imrei Emes, as Gerrer Rebbe. The Imrei Emes, a prime target of the Nazis, managed to escape to Eretz Yisrael in 1940 together with some family members including his three sons — Rav Yisrael and Rav Simchah Bunim (already middle aged with families of their own), and the teenaged Pinchas Menachem. The Rebbe was assured that the remaining family members would escape in the next transport, but that didn’t come to be. They, along with most of the Jews of Gur, perished in the Holocaust.
By the time the Imrei Emes arrived, he was aged, weakened, and physically broken. Yet his arrival was also the culmination of his dream. He’d been to Eretz Yisrael several times in the 1920s and 30s, and encouraged his chassidim to buy properties in the Holy Land.
“We were bochurim in Yeshivas Sfas Emes at the time,” Reb Aryeh recalls of his great-uncle, “and we would occasionally peek at the Rebbe while he was receiving visitors. I personally witnessed him writing at superhuman speed. He would pick up a pen and it would whiz across the paper; he’d write a long letter within seconds. He also spent many hours receiving the public, until the Rebbetzin complained to his gabbai, Yankel Schlosser, that the Rebbe was too weak. Yankel, who knew how vital it was for the Rebbe himself, told her, ‘I’ll arrange for the Rebbetzin to see how the Rebbe receives visitors.’ He told her to look through a small crack in the wall, and when she saw how energized the visitors made her husband — he looked like the picture of health when he was with them — she was calmed. ‘You’ve reassured me,’ she told Yankel.”
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