Peretz Hirshbein (Yiddish: פרץ הירשביין); 7 November 1880, Kleszczele, Grodno Governorate – 16 August 1948, Los Angeles) was a Yiddish-language playwright, novelist, journalist, travel writer, and theater director. Because his work focused more on mood than plot, he became known as "the Yiddish Maeterlinck". His work as a playwright and through his own short-lived but influential troupe, laid much of the groundwork for the second golden age of Yiddish theater that began shortly after the end of World War I. The dialogue of his plays is consistently vivid, terse, and naturalistic. Unusually for a Yiddish playwright, most of his works have pastoral settings: he had grown up the son of a miller, and made several attempts at farming.