MOYSHE ISH HALEVI HURVITS (HORVITS, HURVITSH)

MOYSHE ISH HALEVI HURVITS (HORVITS, HURVITSH) (February 27, 1844-March 4, 1910)

            He was born in Stanislav (Stanislavov), eastern Galicia.  He studied with the great scholar R. Meshulem Horvits and later in the synagogue study hall.  At age fifteen he began learning practice of ritual slaughter, later turning his attention to the Jewish Enlightenment and secular education.  At age eighteen he became a teacher of Hebrew in Jassy, Romania [now, Hungary].  In 1871 he moved to Bucharest, where he became, as he would affirm, professor of geography in the local university (from hence he would assume his subsequent title for himself: Professor Hurvits); and where he also contributed to a collective effort to translate the Tanakh into Romanian.  It is clear that at that time he became director of a Jewish school in Bucharest, and when the local householders fired him from this post, he converted to Christianity and became a missionary.  That same year of 1871 he published for a short time in Bucharest a Hebrew-Romanian newspaper entitled Timpul (Times).  In 1877, as described by Avrom Goldfaden in his memoirs, Hurvits came to him with a three-act play he had written, Dos poylishe yungl (The Polish lad).  This was not a dramatization of Y.-Y. Linetski’s famous work, but Hurvits’s own composition.  Goldfaden chose not to produce this play in the theater.  Hurvits then convened in a tavern “a quorum of wagon drivers, ordered three liters of wine, and then converted to Judaism.  He then gave them a sermon….  And, he called himself Moyshe Ish Horvits Halevi.”  Right after this, Hurvits opened his own theater in the very same tavern and staged there his first play, Der tiranisher banker (The tyrannical banker).  From that point, he traveled with his troupe, in which he also appeared on stage as an actor, through Romania, Galicia, Hungary, and Vienna.  In 1886 he departed for London, and the following year he moved on from there to New York, where he was engaged both as an actor and as a writer of theatrical pieces for the troupe “Romania Opera House.”  At this theater there was a production staged of his highly successful play Tisa esler (Tisa Esler), the one and only play on the Yiddish stage that was performed over the course of two evenings.  From that point in time he was, just like Joseph Lateiner, a producer of famed “historical operettas,” such as: Shloyme hameylekh (King Solomon), Don yozef abarbanal (Don Yosef Abarbanel), Der shapes tsvi (Shabbatai Tsevi), Dovids harfe (David’s harp), Shimshen hagvar (Samson, the strongman), Dovid ben ishay (David, son of Ishai), and an adaptation of Duma’s The Count of Monte Cristo—and many more.  The greatest success of all his operettas was his play, Ben hador ([Prince] Ben Hador).  According to B. Gorin, he wrote eighty-nine theatrical works, mostly adapted and rewritten from the work of other authors.  As an actor, he conformed to the lowest tastes of the public.  While acting, he would give speeches and ridicule competing theaters.  He also composed “images of the times” or “images from life” in a highly Germanized Yiddish.  Among his books: a collection of poems from the “opera” entitled Der meshugener filozof (The crazy philosopher); Beys dovid (House of David), a “historical operetta in four acts” (Podguzhe [Podgórze], 1904; Cracow, 1907; Lemberg, 1909); Ben hador, a “historical operetta in four acts” (Warsaw, 1907); Atalyahu, oder di kreynung fom kenig yoyesh (Atalyahu or the coronation of King Yehoash) (Podguzhe [Podgórze], 1902/1903).  He died in New York.

Sources: Zalmen Reyzen, Leksikon, vol. 1 (with a bibliography); Z. Zilbertsvayg, Leksikon fun yidishn teater (Handbook of the Yiddish theater), vol. 1 (with a detailed bibliography); Sh. Perlmuter, Yidishe dramaturgn un teater-kompozitorn (Yiddish playwrights and theatrical composers) (New York, 1952).