יצחק קובו

Rav Yitzchak ben Chizkiyahu Yosef Kovo (5530/1770–24 Av 5614/1854) was the Rishon LeTzion — head of the rabbanim of Eretz Yisrael — and among the great chachamim of Yerushalayim in the first half of the nineteenth century. He was born into the rabbinic Kovo family; his father was a shadar who died abroad in the course of a mission for the kehillah, and the son’s life followed the same path of service. His signature appears on the letters and takanot of Yerushalayim from 5553/1793 onward, and he himself traveled as a shadar to Turkey and the lands of Ashkenaz on behalf of the city’s poor.

In Yerushalayim he sat as a dayan and stood at the head of two of its important yeshivot: Knesset Yisrael, the yeshiva founded by the Or HaChaim HaKadosh, and Beit Yaakov Pereira. Among his talmidim was Rav Chaim Chizkiyahu Medini, later famed as the Sdei Chemed. In 5608/1848, on the passing of Rav Chaim Avraham Gagin, he was appointed Rishon LeTzion at the age of seventy-eight, leading the Sephardi kehillah of Yerushalayim through years of debt and hardship.

In 5614/1854, with the yishuv crushed by poverty and swelling with destitute olim, the community begged the aged Rishon LeTzion to travel once more to raise funds. He succeeded in Egypt — and there fell ill, and was niftar in Alexandria on 24 Av; Rav Chaim Palagi eulogized him in Izmir. He wrote many works on the Mishnah, the Talmud and the Shulchan Aruch, most preserved in manuscript by his descendants, portions of which his grandson Rav Yitzchak Badhab later published.