Chaim Yisroel Eiss was born in Galicia, Austria-Hungary, in the town of Ustrzyki Dolne, now Poland; as one of 11 children of Rebbe Moshe Nissan Eiss and his wife Myria née Kessler. He was the only one of the children to survive an epidemic of diphtheria, an illness for which there was no treatment at the time. After the death of his other children, his father Rebbe Moshe Nissan Eiss took young Yisroel to the Sadigora Rebbe who blessed him and gave him an additional name, Chaim.