REUVENI, AHARON (1886–1971), Hebrew writer; brother of Izhak *Ben-Zvi, second president of the State of Israel. Born in Poltava, Ukraine, Reuveni went to the U.S. in 1904, returned to Poland in 1906, was exiled to Siberia in 1908, escaped the following year, and reached Palestine in 1910. Active in public affairs, Reuveni published in a wide variety of fields: articles for the press, poems, novels, essays on Hebrew and general literature, studies on social and biblical subjects, and research in early history of the Jewish people and Ereẓ Israel.
Collections of his works include Sippurim (3 vols., 1928, 1951, 1954), a collection of his short stories, among the first to describe the period of the Second Aliyah; Kol Sippurei A. Re'uveni (1967); and Shirim (1965), a collection of his poems. Reuveni's novels are a trilogy on Jerusalem during World War i, Bereshit ha-Mevukhah; Ha-Oniyyot ha-Aḥaronot; and Shammot (first published in the 1920s and again in 1954 as a single book, Ad Yerushalayim); Iẓẓavon (1930); and Gilgul Neshamot (1966). Among his studies of the ancient world and the Bible are Shem, Ḥam ve-Yafet (1932), Kadmut ha-Ivrim (1962), and David ha-Melekh (1965). Reuveni's Ir Yerushalayim was published in 1987, preceded by Yalkut Sippurim, a collection of stories edited (with an introduction) by H. Bar-Yosef (1980). A. Pilovski edited Reuveni's Yiddish stories in Gezamelte Derzeylungen (1991). Reuveni translated many works from English and French.