Rabbi Ben-Zion Alfes was born in Vilna on 1 Kislev 5611 (November 6, 1850), the son of Rabbi Yirmeyahu Akiva and Sarah Esther. His father, a merchant, lived modestly and studied Torah all his life. At seven the boy learned Chumash with Rashi at the Talmud Torah of the Zatz yeshiva, and at ten he entered the yeshiva of Rabbi Shraga Feivish Licht. He lost his mother at fourteen, on 26 Cheshvan 5625 (November 25, 1864), and his father ten months later, on 10 Cheshvan 5626. Married at sixteen to Nechama, his stepmother's daughter, he studied for four years in the Kloiz of the Vilna Gaon in the Great Synagogue of Vilna.

Early on he dreamed of Eretz Yisrael: "How is Jerusalem inferior to Vilna? Why should only old people travel to Jerusalem for the graves on the Mount of Olives?" he wrote in his memoirs. In 5632-5633 (1872-1873) he lived alone in Jerusalem, studying in the Menachem Zion beit midrash beside the Churva synagogue and teaching poor children without pay; the poverty of the land and his wife's refusal to leave Vilna forced him to return. He then worked for fifteen years at the Matz printing house in Vilna as manager and proofreader, preaching on Shabbat and festivals in the city's synagogues. In 5651 (1891) he opened a workshop for stockings and gloves, and on his many business trips across Russia he preached everywhere and gave generously to charity, paying tuition for orphans and helping Jewish soldiers.

His sermons, in a style all his own, drew crowds of every class, whom he gently brought closer to their Father in Heaven. He refused to be paid for his lectures. On his travels he met Rabbi Yisrael Salanter, the Beit HaLevi, Rabbi Shmuel Salant, Rabbi Simcha Zissel of Kelm and the Netziv of Volozhin. The First World War stranded him in Poltava, where he kept a small business and where his wife died at seventy; he returned to Vilna in 5682 (1922).

Preacher and writer, he set out to block secular Haskalah by producing rooted Jewish literature in the language of the people. From 1900 he published his series of stories Maaseh Alfes, based on mussar and chassidut, which went through twelve editions and became a household classic. He wrote some sixty works: halachah, aggadah, commentaries on the prayers and especially the festival prayers, a collection of techinot called Mekor Dimah, Otzar HaTechiyah (a Tzenah uRenah in modern language), and he translated mussar classics such as Sefer HaYirah and Shaarei Teshuvah of Rabbeinu Yonah into Yiddish. The Chofetz Chaim wrote to him that he "brings merit to the many." His siddurim and machzorim in vowelized Yiddish made him a pioneer of Orthodox Yiddish literature.

In 5685 (1925) he settled in Eretz Yisrael, first in Petach Tikvah, where he led the classes of the Tiferet Bachurim society and helped establish two mikvaot, and later in Jerusalem. For his ninetieth birthday, on Rosh Chodesh Kislev 5701, his autobiography Toledot veZichronot appeared. Those who knew him remember an elderly man, bent over, with eyes turned to the ground and an eternal joy illuminating a face adorned by a long white beard. He passed away in Jerusalem on 23 Kislev 5701 (December 23, 1940) and is buried on the Mount of Olives.