Graduate of the Virginia Military Institute, was the first Jewish cadet to attend VMI. He and other cadets from VMI marched 80 miles north from Lexington and fought at the 1864 Battle of New Market, where Ezekiel was wounded in a fight with Union army troops under Franz Sigel. After his recovery, he served with the cadets in Richmond to train new recruits for the army. Shortly before the end of the war, he served in the trenches defending the city.

He would become one of the world's great artist. Moving to Europe later in life to pursue his craft of sculpture.

Ezekiel had been honored by several Italian Kings, Robert E. Lee, U.S. Presidents Grant, Theodore Roosevelt, Taft, and Wilson, and such notables as Mark Twain, Thomas Nelson Page, J.P. Morgan, Anthony Drexel, Giuseppe Garibaldi, Franz Liszt, and Kaiser Wilhelm II.

With his passing, a New York Times dispatch from Rome reported:

"The death of Moses Ezekiel, the distinguished and greatly beloved American sculptor, who lived in Rome for more than forty years, caused universal regret here."

Late in life, however, his heart had sentimentally returned to his Virginia roots and to "The VMI, where every stone and blade of grass is dear to me, and the name of the cadet of the VMI, the proudest and most honored title I can ever possess." His body was shipped aboard the Duca degli Abruzzi from Naples, Italy, on February 27, 1921.

True to his loyal words, in a March 31, 1921, burial ceremony—the first held in the amphitheater at Arlington National Cemetery, and presided over by U.S. Secretary of War John W. Weeks, Ezekiel was laid to rest next to his Confederate memorial. Flanking his flower-bedecked and American-flag covered casket, were six VMI cadet captains and two other cadets, including future Marine Commandant Randolph McC. Pate [VMI 1921]. At the gravesite, a small headstone was placed. Its simple words spoke volumes:

Moses J. Ezekiel
Sergeant of Company C
Battalion of Cadets of the
Virginia Military Institute

During the funeral the Marine Band played Liszt's "Love's Dream"' a message was read from President Warren G. Harding, who praised Ezekiel as "a great Virginian, a great artist, a great American, and a great citizen of world fame;" a tribute was paid by Rabbi D. Philipson of Cincinnati (who wrote a monograph on Ezekiel the following year); and a Masonic interment was conducted by the Washington Centennial Lodge No. 14, F.A.A.M. A separate ceremony was conducted by the United Daughters of the Confederacy at the Scottish Rite Temple.