Mordechai Dovid Alpert was born into the family of Rabbi Chaim Shabtai Alpert known as "Chaim Matmid" and who was a gggrandson of Aryeh Leib Epstein

Aryeh Leib Epstein

Aryeh Löb ben Mordecai Ha-Levi Epstein was a Polish rabbi born in Grodno. At first he refused to become a rabbi, preferring to devote himself entirely to study, but in 1739 he was forced by poverty to accept the rabbinate of Brestovech, Lithuania, and in 1745 he became rabbi of Königsberg,...

 (Ba'al ha-Pardes) of Königsberg

Königsberg

Königsberg was the capital of East Prussia from the Late Middle Ages until 1945 as well as the northernmost and easternmost German city with 286,666 inhabitants . Due to the multicultural society in and around the city, there are several local names for it...

.

Alpert served as a rabbi in Orlya

Orla, Podlaskie Voivodeship

Orla is a village in Bielsk County, Podlaskie Voivodeship, in north-eastern Poland. It is the seat of the gmina called Gmina Orla. It lies approximately south-east of Bielsk Podlaski and south of the regional capital Białystok....

 in 1877 and Mordy

Mordy

Mordy is a town in Siedlce County, Masovian Voivodeship, Poland, with 1,831 inhabitants . Its name means Muzzles....

 in 1880s. In 1890 he became a rabbi in Svisloch near Bobruysk and was the head of a rabbinical court in the district of Minsk

Minsk

- Ecological situation :The ecological situation is monitored by Republican Center of Radioactive and Environmental Control .During 2003–2008 the overall weight of contaminants increased from 186,000 to 247,400 tons. The change of gas as industrial fuel to mazut for financial reasons has worsened...

. He soon abandoned his rabbinic duties in order to concentrate on Talmud

Talmud

The Talmud is a central text of mainstream Judaism. It takes the form of a record of rabbinic discussions pertaining to Jewish law, ethics, philosophy, customs and history....

 research and his writings. His published works included sefers Yad Morcechai, Binyan Dovid, Divrei Dodim and Chemed Mordechai. He became known in the rabbinical world as "Yad Mordechai" after the sefer he had published. He left some unpublished manuscripts that now reside in Hebrew University in Jerusalem and The Rambam Library in Tel-Aviv. Rabbi Alpert died during World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

while being held hostage by the Germans during occupation of Svisloch.