Rabbi Tiktinsky was born on October 13, 1823, in the town of Mir in the Russian Empire (currently in Belarus).

[4] His father, Rabbi Shmuel Tiktinsky, had founded the Mir Yeshiva in his town several years prior, in 1817, and after his death in 1835, his older son, Rabbi Avraham Tiktinsky, became the rosh yeshiva, the post he held until his death four years later.

Chaim Leib was just 17 seventeen years old at the time of his brother's death, and too young to replace him as rosh yeshiva.

After the presentations, it was decided that Rabbi Tiktinsky's approach was better for the students, and he was appointed as rosh yeshiva.

Rabbi Yisrael Salanter commented on this approach, saying that "anyone who wants to understand the daf (a folio of the Babylonian Talmud) properly should listen to Reb Chaim Leib teach it.