[2][3] Isaac Erter was born into the family of a poor Jewish innkeeper in the Galician town of Koniuszek, near Przemyśl.

[6] This comparatively happy state ended after three years, when, on 10 May 1816, Chief Rabbi Jacob Meshullam Ornstein excommunicated the city's most prominent maskilim.

[9][10] Deprived thus of his pupils, the only means of his subsistence, he settled in the neighbouring town of Brody,[11] where he encountered Hirsch Mendel Pineles, Jacob Bick, and Isaac Baer Levinsohn.

He afterwards practised his new profession in various Galician towns amid the cholera pandemic,[11] eventually returning to Brody, where he made himself especially popular among the poor and needy.

[8] In public affairs, Erter founded the Galizisch-jüdischer Akerbauverein, which advocated for the establishment in Galicia of agricultural colonies for the employment and benefit of young Jews.

[5] His collected works were published posthumously under the title Ha-tzofeh le-veit Yisrael ('A Watchman unto the House of Israel'; Vienna, 1858),[4] with a biography of the author and introduction by Max Letteris.

The soul gives the author the following six rules, by observing which he might succeed in his profession: The story was later translated into Yiddish by Isaac Mayer Dick.