Yaakov Yitzhaki was born in
Derbent in present-day Dagestan, Russia, into a family of
Mountain Jews. He received his religious education from his father, Rabbi Yitzhak ben Yaakov, and, like his father, at a
yeshiva in
Bila Tserkva. In 1868, when he was 22 years old, with the consent of the elders of the community, his father appointed him chief rabbi and
religious judge of Derbent. Yitzhaki studied secular sciences and the Russian language in a
realschule. He kept in touch with orientalists, including
Abraham Harkavy and
Judah Chorny. In the 1880s, he was appointed by the tsarist government as
crown rabbi of the Mountain Jews of Southern
Dagestan and
Azerbaijan. He compiled the first
Juhuri-
Hebrew dictionary and a brief history of the Mountain Jews. He was buried on the
Mount of Olives. == Archive ==