00:01–01:39
Chat at the start about someone telephoning and not getting through, then Geller says he has lived about ninety-one years. Kerler suggests he should aim for a hundred and twenty.
Later expeditions, 2012–2018 › 2015 Expedition
AHEYM-2015-065 · Geller, Benjomin
Zhytomyr (Zhitomir in the project's index)
2015-05-27
23 min · 7 stretches · 1 questions about words
Yiddish 98%
Not online: the recording is held by the project and is not on Media Collections Online, YouTube or archive.org. Everything below is a paraphrase of a machine transcript, the weaker of this site's two transcript layers — see how it was made.
Summary
Audio track, the last of three consecutive files of a 2015 session in Zhitomir with Benjomin Geller, who says he is about 91. Mostly Geller's own talk in Yiddish, with Kerler putting in remarks. He reflects on his good and bad years, recounts his granddaughter's university admission in the Soviet period, tells anecdotes about thanking people and about wishing long life, then talks about Lviv, mobile phones and sayings about kindness and ingratitude, and a loan of money.
Stretches
01:39–05:47
Asked what the good years were, Geller recounts how his granddaughter was admitted to an institute in the Soviet period, when Jewish applicants were turned away. He describes the posted lists, the locked doors and the dean's questions to a hundred and three students. She studied four years with a stipend and graduated with honours, and that was his good year.
05:47–08:37
Kerler remarks that nachas from children made the good years, and Geller adds that bad years need no seeking. Geller recalls travelling to small towns such as Berdichev and others, and tells an anecdote about wishing someone a hundred and twenty years, with a man who preferred a hundred and nineteen.
08:34–10:57
Geller and Kerler discuss the names of Geller's daughter and granddaughters, including Hebrew names such as Sarah Malka and Ilane (?), named after his wife Miriam. Geller quotes a saying that too much good is not good, and brings up Copernicus.
11:02–16:31
Geller tells how he used always to say thank you to a colonel he met through the Jewish community (hesed, as heard), and about drinking brandy. He recalls his grandfather's brother teaching him to thank for everything, with a market example of buying potatoes, and stresses greeting people.
16:31–19:35
Kerler says that, on seeing Geller was missing, he asked where he was. They mention trips to Berdichev and Chernovtsy, then Lviv (Lemberg), someone's wife from there, and visitors from America, Israel, France and London. Geller and Kerler discuss mobile phones and photographs, a song someone sang over the phone, and the hope that all Jews will go to Israel.
19:35–23:26
Talk about credit and bank loans, followed by a sequence of proverbs about repaying good with evil and bread with a stone, in Russian/Ukrainian and Yiddish. Kerler calls him pessimistic and tells an anecdote about doing favours. Geller recalls an earlier period when people lent small sums, and a loan of money to a young man.
Questions about words
- 08:44In Russian, Ukrainian? — what the daughter's name is in Russian or Ukrainian