REINES, YITSḤAQ YAʿAQOV (1839–1915) was one of the founders and first leaders of Mizraḥi, a religious Zionist movement established at the beginning of the twentieth century. Reines was born in Belorussia, studied at the leading yeshivot (rabbinic academies), and served as a rabbi in a variety of towns in Lithuania throughout his life. He made a major contribution to rabbinic scholarship, with emphasis on a strictly logical approach to problems in Jewish law. He published a number of important legal works, including Ḥotam tokhnit (1880–1881), and a homiletical work, Nod shel demaʿot (1891). While serving as rabbi of Sventsyany from 1869 to 1885, Reines established a yeshivah that combined traditional studies with secular subjects, but he was forced to close the school after several months as a result of extreme Orthodox opposition. Only...