Request for donations to the Rebbe Meir Ba'al haNess Charity Fund with ten lines of handwritten text and signature by R. Chaim Eleazar Shapira (1872–1937), Rebbe of Munkacs from 1913 and Hasidic zaddik. He succeeded in combining 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 even after Munkacs (Mukachevo) had passed to Czechoslovakia. Of lively temperament, he intervened in communal affairs beyond his community, and was even more adamant than his ancestors in opposing all innovation. An extremist 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 any natural activity, political or colonizing, was liable to lead to a holocaust. He opposed the Balfour Declaration. On the other hand, he supported the "old yishuv" and was the president of the Kolel Munkacs in Jerusalem. In 1930 he visited Erez Israel, where he met and encouraged the anti-Zionist elements. His Hasidim viewed this journey as an apocalyptical act.

 

After the example of his father, he called for the maintenance of traditional education and for its financial support. He opposed the Hebrew schools which were established in eastern Czechoslovakia between the two world wars, and condemned the Hebrew secondary school of his town. 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, Issachar Dov Roke'ah, who lived in Mukachevo from 1918 to 1921. His works include Minhat Elazar, responsa (1–4, 1902–30); Divrei Kodesh, sermons (1933); Hamishah Ma'amarot (1922); and Sefer Mashmi'a Yeshu'ah (1919, 1956).