[1] He was born in Korma, in the Mogilev Governorate of the Russian Empire (present-day Gomel Region of Belarus), to a Hasidic Chabad family.

[2] In childhood, studying at first under his father, Aaron-Eliezer, he garnered recognition for his remarkable memory and grasp of the rabbinic material before his eleventh birthday.

[3] After his father died in 1887, Hillel Zeitlin, at the age of 16, embarked on travels through the Jewish villages of the Pale of Settlement, earning his living as a Hebrew teacher.

[citation needed] After World War I, Zeitlin gradually returned to tradition and began leading an Orthodox lifestyle.

Zeitlin endeavored to preserve what he called the "treasure" at the core of Hasidic teaching (which he considered to be obscured in his day by pseudo-intellectual trivialities and excessive concern for outward appearance), and to make it accessible not only to Jews of his era but to non-Jews.

Zeitlin was of the opinion that it would be impossible to settle in Palestine without removing the half a million Palestinian Arabs and so the Zionist proposals would fail.