Moses Horowitz

thumb|Gravestone of the playwright Moses Horowitz

thumb|1907 Moyshe Hurwitz show Malke Shvo (The Queen of Sheba)

Moses Ha-Levi Horowitz (February 27, 1844 – March 4, 1910), also known as Moishe Hurvitz, Moishe Isaac Halevy-Hurvitz, etc., was a playwright and actor in the early years of Yiddish theater. Jacob Adler describes him as an "authorit[y] on dramaturgy", but also remarks that before being part of the Yiddish theater in London in the mid-1880s he had "wandered in different lands, involved himself in various undertakings, and then moved on often leaving, it is said not altogether pleasant memories behind him." He was one of the few figures in the early years of Yiddish theater who did not participate in the boom years in Imperial Russia (1879–1883).

Famous for the speed with which he turned out his plays (usually in no more than three days), he would sometimes start actors rehearsing the first two acts of a play while he wrote the third backstage. He received the usual Jewish education, and also studied German.

In Romania in 1877, he converted back to Judaism and, having been turned down as a playwright by Goldfaden, He went to New York City either in 1884 he died poor. After the success of his 1904 play Ben Hador, he lost all of his money on an unsuccessful venture in 1905 to present grand opera in Yiddish at the Windsor Theatre, on the Bowery; shortly after that, he was stricken with paralysis, and lived out his last years in the Montefiore Home, provided for by his friends. He died in Montefiore, and was buried in Washington Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York.