Haim-Moshe Shapira was born to Zalman Shapira and Rosa Krupnik in the Russian Empire in Grodno in what is today Belarus, Shapiro was educated in cheder and a yeshiva, where he organised a youth group called "Bnei Zion" (lit. "Sons of Zion"). He worked in the Education and Culture department of the National Jewish Council in Kaunas (now in Lithuania), and in 1919 set up the "Young Mizrachi", which became a leading player in the religious Zionist youth movement in Lithuania. In 1922 he started work as a teacher at an ultra-orthodox school in Vilnius, and also served on the board of the Mizrachi group in the city. Between 1923 and 1924 he was active in the "Young Mizrachi" group in Warsaw, before attending a Rabbinical Seminary in Berlin between 1924 and 1925.