Rabbi Moshe Yehoshua Bezhilianski, known as Reb Alter of Teplik, was the son of Rabbi Asher Zelig of Teplik near Uman, himself a disciple of Reb Noson, the closest student of Rebbe Nachman of Breslov. He drew close to the Breslov circle in Uman after marrying, as his second wife, the sister of Rabbi Avraham Chazan, son of Rabbi Nachman Chazan, Reb Noson's disciple and leader of the Uman Chassidim. He was a student of Rabbi Nachman of Tcherin and learned from Reb Noson's other disciples.

He was a central Breslov figure in Uman in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and one of its most important writers. He was the first to publish the writings of Rebbe Nachman and Reb Noson arranged by topic: Meshivat Nefesh (Lemberg, 1902), on faith, repentance and encouragement, and Hishtapchut HaNefesh (Jerusalem, 1904), on personal prayer and hitbodedut, both still widely read. Several Breslov leaders of the next generation, such as Rabbi Shmuel Horowitz, attested that their first encounter with Breslov teaching came through Hishtapchut HaNefesh.

In 1882 he visited the Land of Israel. On 12 Adar 5679 (1919), at about seventy, he was murdered in a pogrom against the Jewish community of Teplik during the Ukrainian civil war; according to one account he was killed while studying at home, according to another in the synagogue, holding a Torah scroll.