Imrei Emes

Rabbi Avraham Mordechai Alter (c. 1866–1948) is remembered by the title of his collected Torah discourses, Imrei Emes ("Words of Truth"). He led the Ger Hasidic community, centered in the town of Góra Kalwaria (Ger) near Warsaw, succeeding his father, Yehudah Aryeh Leib Alter—known as the Sfas Emes—as Rebbe in 1905. Over the following decades Ger grew into one of the largest Hasidic movements in Poland, numbering over two hundred thousand adherents. He was among the founders of Agudath Israel in Poland and worked to establish a network of religious schools. In 1940, amid the German occupation, he reached Mandatory Palestine together with several of his sons, while much of his family and community perished in the Holocaust. Settling in Jerusalem, he rebuilt the community there, and he died in the city in 1948 during its siege.