Digitizing History: Palestine Broadcasting Service, 1936-1948

Writers Reading their own Works

Martin Buber : Reading from his own work, The Way of Man: According to the Teaching of Hasidism (1945)
A series of six (6) weekly 15-minute broadcasts (in Hebrew) aired on Saturdays, beginning October 20, 1945.
Transcripts appeared a couple of weeks after each broadcast in the weekly radio magazine Hagalgal
It was part of a wider series of broadcasts presented in collaboration with the Committee for Public Education of the Hebrew University. הועדה להשכלת העם של האוניברסיטה העברית
Unfortunately, there are no known audio recordings of these early broadcasts currently in existence.
To see the transcripts that appeared in the magazine Hagalgal: CLICK HERE

Yehuda Ya'ari: Reading Peter Schlemihl Found His Shadow
April 23, 1945, Yehuda Ya'ari presented, in Hebrew, the first of his six 15-minute broadcasts for the Palestine Broadcasting Service (PBS), reading from his then just published short story Peter Shlumiel Matza Tzel (Peter Schlemihl Found His Shadow, Ofer Publishing House. Ya'ari was clearly inspired after reading French-German writer Adelbert Chamisso's classic Peter Schlemihl: The Shadowless Man - A story without an end", by Carode, which was first published around 1812. The original story was about Peter Schlemihl, a person who sold his soul with the devil to be able to live forever and get riches beyond belief. On receiving this gift he immediately regretted it, as the devil took his shadow as payment. He would be shunned by society, stigmatized by ordinary folk who were frightened at the sight of a person without a shadow. Instead of enjoying life, he was forever cursed to hunt for his shadow to get it back.

[An aside: Could this be the origin or inspiration of Peter Pan, the boy who lived forever, by Scottish writer, James M. Barrie. (1911). In Chaptert II, of Peter Pan, Peter loses his shadow, as Wendy's dog, Nana, bites it off as Peter makes his escape through the window. Wendy places it in a drawer for safe keeping.]

Ya'ari, living in Jerusalem at that time, realized he could make a sequel to the original Chamisso story. The shadow being a metaphor, representing anyone who felt loss of identity, but particularly the Jewish people's relationship with Palestine, characterized by the slogan "A land without a nation for a nation without a land" - a variation to a phrase said to be coined around 1844 by a another Scotsman, a clergyman, the Rev. Dr. Alexander Keith (1781-1880).

Schlemihl was broadcast every Monday and Wednesday, each broadcast, a separate chapter in this 6-chapter short story. Yitzhak (Shenhar) Shenberg (1902-1957) presented an introduction to the series, transcribed in Hagalgal Volume 2, No. 31, page 18

Once again, sadly, there are currently no known audio recordings of any of these broadcasts.