He was from an old and distinguished Jewish family. His father Berman (d. 1859) was a Sappers captain in Napoleon’s army and later the chief cashier and procurator at the Simon Lämmel Banking House in Vienna and at the Prague branch managed by Lämmel’s son, Leopold. His grandfather, Baruch Brandeis, was a rabbi and assessor at the rabbinical court of the Prague Jewish community and the author of the religious works Leshon Hakhamim and Tzeidah Baruch. Among Jakob B. Brandeis’s ancestors was Moses Brandeis, the son-in-law of Rabbi Loew; his wife was the daughter of the second leading Prague-based publisher, Wolf Pascheles.

Originally a journalist, Jakob B. Brandeis was involved in current Jewish topics and active against manifestations of anti-Semitism throughout his life. From the 1860s he wrote articles for periodicals in Prague and Vienna and from 1881 he shaped the form and content of the Illustrated Israelite Folk Calendar (Illustrirter israelitischer Volkskalender), which he published himself. In 1864 he established a printing house; his publications were printed by this house and by another Prague printer A. Haase. Brandeis’s publishing house and bookstore was based originally on the Old-Town Square and, from 1892, in Celetná Street. In 1899 Brandeis opened a branch in Wroclaw (Breslau). Brandeis’s Jüdische Universalsbibliothek was a series of cheap editions that popularized many works by Jewish authors. In addition to literature, the Brandeis bookstore also offered ritual appurtenances, such as tefillin bags, prayer shawls, candelabra and decorative and devotional printed sheets for Jewish households; these contained motifs of the Old-New Synagogue in Prague as well as depictions of major biblical figures (Moses and Aaron, David and Solomon) and personalities of the day (such as Sir Moses Montefiore).

Jakob B. Brandeis was also the author of other books, including: Mane loschon = Ma`aneh lashon : Gebete auf dem Friedhofe in hebräischen Text. (Prague, 1884), and Ruth. Deutsches Gebet- und Erbauungsbuch für israelitische Mädchen zur häuslichen Andacht und zum öffentlichen Gottesdienste (Breslau, 1908).