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Single sheet comprised twenty-two two line stanzas detailing troubles, calling for repentance, and praying for the coming New Year. The sheet was folded and mailed, perhaps as a call for a moral awakening New Years greeting. The verso, used as an envelope, is addressed to Herrn Dr. David Kaufmann in Vienna and has a cancelled Austrian stamp. The text is in two columns in unvocalized square letters with key words printed in bold letters. The first stanza begins My people! On whom do you trust? – for you have REBELLED against your God, going in the way of other nations – and following their abominations. It concludes with the traditional New Year salutation that the recipient should be written for a good life.
Shimon Bachrach (Simon Bacher, 1823–1891), the author of this Rosh Ha-Shanah wake up call, was a Hebrew translator. He was born in Szent Miklos, Hungary, and was the father of the Orientalist Wilhelm Bacher and a descendant of R. Jair Hayyim Bacharach (1638-1702). When writing in Hebrew, he used the latter's surname. In 1867 he moved to Budapest, where he was employed as a bookkeeper. From 1874 until his death he served as the treasurer of the Jewish community. Bacher wrote poetry in the flowery style of the Haskalah and also translated German and Hungarian poetry into Hebrew. He was a regular contributor to the Hebrew periodicals Ha-Havazzelet and Kokhevei Yizhak. In 1865 his Hebrew translation of Lessing's Nathan der Weise appeared in Vienna, and in 1868 he published Zemirot ha-Arez ("Songs of the Land"), an anthology of translations from Hungarian poetry. His selected works Sha'ar Shimon (3 vols., 1894), were published posthumously by his son.
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