Yisrael Bak (1797–1874), also spelled Israel Bak or Back, came from a family of printers from Berdichev. After working as a printer in his home town between 1815 and 1821 and having to close down his business, he eventually immigrated to Palestine in 1831. He reopened his printing press in Safed, being the first one to print Hebrew books there since the late 17th century. In 1834, his press was destroyed and he was wounded in the peasant revolt against Egyptian rule. He then settled on nearby Mount Yarmak (Meron) together with other fifteen Jewish families, where the community engaged in agriculture, making it the first Jewish farm in the country in modern times and the first new settlement of the traditional Jewish community, the Old Yishuv. Affected first by the Safed earthquake of 1837 and after seeing his press and farm destroyed during the Druze revolt of 1838, he left the Galilee and relocated to Jerusalem. There he established anew his printing press in 1841–the first and only Jewish printing press in the city until 1863. Nissan helped his father run the printing press, which produced a large number of books, and in 1863 Israel Bak also started editing "Havatzelet", the second Hebrew newspaper in the country. Yisrael Bak was also one of the developers of the Jewish Quarter in the Old City of Jerusalem. In the early 1840s, father and son established the first Hasidic community in Jerusalem.