His first rabbinical position was in Lipnishuk, near Vilnius, in 1909. In 1914, he was appointed rabbi of the nearby larger town of
Iwye. He was regularly invited by the
Chafetz Chaim to important rabbinic gatherings. He was vice-president of the Agudath HaRabbanim in Poland. In 1931 he became rabbi and
Av Beth Din of
Łomża. His time in Łomża was marked by anti-Jewish demonstrations, the outlawing of
kosher slaughtering and a boycott of Jewish shops. Many Łomża Jews fled and the community gradually declined. With the
Hitler-Stalin pact in August 1939 on the division of Poland, Łomża was transferred to the
Soviet Union. Shatzkes escaped the city by night to Vilnius, which was later handed over by the Soviets to Lithuania. Along with many others,
Shimon Shkop's yeshiva, ''Sha'ar HaTorah'' of
Grodno, had fled to Vilnius. After Shkop's death Shatzkes was appointed by Rabbi Chaim Ozer Grodzinski to succeed him as . Shatzkes was active in refugee and yeshiva affairs while in Vilnius. After the city was re-captured by the Russians, he travelled via Russia to Japan, having received a Japanese permit from
Chiune Sugihara, the Japanese temporary consul in
Kovno. Arriving in
Kobe by boat in May 1941, Shatzkes immediately renewed his relief efforts for the almost five thousand Jewish refugees there. They included many yeshiva heads and almost the entire
Mir Yeshiva, who had fled Poland and Lithuania. He befriended the Japanese scholar
Setzuso Kotsuji, a friend of Japan's Foreign Affairs minister, and with his help he aided the fleeing of thousands of refugees. Shatzkes was selected by the refugee community as one of their two representatives (the other being the
rebbe of
Amshinov,
Shimon Sholom Kalish) to the Japanese government. Shatzkes reached America in 1941. He was immediately appointed a senior Rosh Yeshiva at
Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary, remaining in this role for the rest of his life. He also served as a council member of the
Agudath HaRabbanim of the United States and Canada. Along with
Joseph B. Soloveitchik and
Samuel Belkin, Shatzkes was a member of the Rabbinical Ordination Board at the seminary, granting to 425 of its graduates. Shatzkes was a friend of
Yitzchak Halevi Herzog, chief rabbi of Israel, and had been a friend of both the
Chofetz Chaim and
Chaim Ozer Grodzinski before the
Second World War. He delivered eulogies at both their funerals. ==Death==