His father, Moshe Ya'akov Tamares, owned a tavern and was the grandson of a well-known tzadik known as Maltsher Preacher, Reb Arehle.

[1] He was originally set to marry the eldest daughter of the Chief Rabbi of Milejczyce, but she unexpectedly passed away before the marriage went through.

In 1905, Hayim Nahman Bialik and S. Boriskhin published his Sefer ha-yahadut veha-ḥerut, which argued for a justice-centered Judaism and against what he viewed as a non-Jewish nationalism that was dominant in the movement.

In 1912, he was invited by Chaim Tchernowitz to take over the latter's yeshiva in Odesa, although he declined the offer because of his aversion to urban living.

[4] He died on 10 August 1931 at the age of 62,[5] and was eulogized by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency as a "champion of Zionism and of world peace.

In kollel, he was noted for his anti-war preaching, arguing that war consisted of "taking people from their homes, against their will, and setting them in front of the firing cannons [...] This is the pinnacle of dread against which a special struggle must be initiated.

"[7] This belief in particular became essential to his system in the years following World War I, and the destruction that that wrought on Europe and on European Jewry in particular.

The Destruction of the Temples, then, offered an opportunity to overcome statist illusions and shift Judaism into a personal religion, which had greater potential than that of the First Commonwealth.