Ariel Bension (also transliterated as Ben-Zion, born May 7, 1880, in Jerusalem, Ottoman Empire; died November 9, 1932, in Neuilly-sur-Seine, French Third Republic) was a Jewish writer and Zionist activist.
Life Ariel Bension was the "son of a grand chacham of a Moroccan Kabbalist sect"Eugen Hoeflich: Neue oriente Literatur, in: Neue Freie Presse, March 13, 1921, p. 32, quoted by Armin A. Wallas: Eugen Hoeflich, 1999, p. 346 and a descendant of Abraham ben Samuel ibn Hasdai ha-Levi of Barcelona.Denison Ross, Foreword, 1932, p.xiii
As a young man, Bension spent some time with relatives in French North Africa and then went to Germany and Switzerland to study philosophy.Vita Ariel Bension in the foreword to Saul I. Aranov: ' 'A descriptive catalog of the Bension collection', 1979, p. xiii, xiv He received his doctorate from the University of Bern.
Bension was a rabbi in Bitola for a year in 1913, which had belonged to the Kingdom of Serbia since 1912. Back in Palestine, he married Rahel Mizrahi and later, had a second marriage to Ida Siegler from Montreal. His estate, therefore, went to his Canadian relatives and from them to the University of Alberta.
Bension was active in Zionism and traveled to Jewish communities in the Near East, and Asia, North Africa, South America and Europe, where he campaigned for support for the Yishuv of Palestine. He participated in the Twelfth Zionist Congress in Carlsbadhttps://www.persee.fr/doc/rjuiv_0484-8616_1985_num_144_4_2155 Zionist Activity in Southern Marocco 1919-1923 p.366 and the fifteenth World Zionist Congress in Basel.
Because of his historical work on the Zohar, he was appointed (corresponding) member of the Real Academia de la Historia in Madrid.
Works The Marriage of Death. Translation Eugen Hoeflich and others. Sascha Kronburg drew the 6 pictures and the cover. Tal, Leipzig 1920. The Jewish Renaissance in Eretz Israel, in
A very critical reception: Jack Sasson Levy: "Un diamante en el camino. Vida y obra del Dr. Ariel Ben Zion", Tronix Diseño, Sonora [Mexico] 2006.
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