R. Hayyim Eleazar Shapira (1872–1937) was the son of R. Zevi Hirsch, a well known zaddik, under whom Munkacs became an important center of Hasidism. R. Shapira combined talmudic dialectics with the ability to reach halakhic decisions and a wide knowledge of Kabbalah and hasidic learning. He had many admirers and many opponents, and exercised great influence over the rabbis of Hungary. R. Shapiro was influential in communal affairs well beyond his community, and was adamant in opposing innovation. An opponent of Zionism, Mizrachi, and Agudat Israel, he regarded every organization engaged in the colonization of Erez Israel to be inspired by heresy and atheism. Redemption was to be a miraculous phenomenon, and political or colonizing activities were liable to lead to a holocaust. On the other hand, he supported the old yishuv and was the president of the Kolel Munkacs in Jerusalem. 1930 In R. Shapiro visited the Holy Land to make the personal acquaintance of the kabbalist R. Solomon Eliezer Alfandari, staying for thirteen days. He also met and encouraged anti-Zionist groups, calling for the maintenance of traditional education and for its financial support. His struggles were not only ideological, and he occasionally became involved in local disputes with rival zaddikim, waging a campaign of many years with the zaddik of Belz, R. Issachar Dov Roke'ah, who lived in Mukachevo from 1918 to 1921.

R. Shapiro was, on a personal level, a cordial individual, with the result that he had friends in many quarters; his kindness and consideration for the underprivileged was boundless. A prolific writer, he wrote more than thirty works, including the authoritative Minhat Elazar, responsa (1–5, 1902–30); Divrei Kodesh, sermons (1933); Hamishah Ma'amarot (1922); and Sefer Mashmi'a Yeshu'ah (1919, 1956).