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17 “AAR Martin Marty Award” Conversation with Judith Plaskow The last chapter in part 2, Memory and Movement, is an interview1 with my longstanding colleague and friend, the renowned Jewish feminist the*logian Judith Plaskow. Thirty years ago, Judith and I founded the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, the premier academic journal in the field. Although such an undertaking required much time and work, we did it because we were convinced that such a journal was necessary for fostering the intellectual power of the movement. The success of JFSR was made possible also through the tireless work of many students who have volunteered their time and energy and who have matured into a new generation of leading feminist scholars. The occasion for the interview was my receiving the American Academy of Religion’s Martin Marty Award for the Public Understanding of Religion. The interview took place in a session at the 2012 AAR Annual Meeting in Chicago, Illinois. Judith Plaskow (JP): First of all, congratulations on this well-deserved award. Who could have imagined, when we first met at the Women Exploring Theology Conference at Grailville in the summer of 1972, that we would be sitting here together forty years later! I’m delighted to be able to talk with you about your life and work. Why don’t you begin by telling us a bit about your family background? Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza (ESF): I was born in Tschanad, Romania, a multiethnic border town of Romanians (Cenad), Serbs (Čenad), Hungarians (Cenád), and Gypsies (Roma) in the Banat, with a large German community. The town has a rich history. During the Roman Empire, the place was known as Urbs Morisena. In 1030, the town became a bishopric with a theological 1. First published as “Martin Marty Award Conversation between Judith Plaskow and Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza.” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 29, no. 1 (Spring 2013): 165–86. 265 school. The town was completely destroyed by the Tatars in the thirteenth century and was only partially rebuilt as a Serbian village in 1701. Between 1723 and 1765, German settlers built up the German section of the town, and three waves of more than 150,000 German people, mostly farmers and craftspeople, migrated to six geographical areas of the Austro-Hungarian Empire controlled by the Hapsburgs in the years between 1711 and 1787. They later came to be known as Donauschwaben or Danube Swabians, although my ancestors probably came from the Sauerland, a rural area spreading across most of the southeastern part of North Rhine-Westphalia. Today, these areas of the Banat are part of Romania, Serbia, and Hungary. The Banat Province was part of the Pannonia Basin or Plain and one of the primary areas of German settlements known as the “breadbasket of Europe.”2 In October 1944, street fighting broke out and most of the Germans left—wo/men, the elderly, and children—fleeing in horse-drawn carts with the retreating German army as Soviet troops invaded. Stories such as the following by Alex Leeb were whispered so that we children would not hear them. I did not know the word “rape,” and could not ask because I was not supposed to have listened to the grown-ups. Fortunately, I never had to witness directly the ensuing rape and killing when the Russian army entered the German part of the town; but others would describe it later: With force, the Russian soldiers broke through the door and swarmed down the basement with their machine guns. For us children, it was a nightmare. The Russian soldiers beat up our grandmothers, and we watched, while our mothers and the young girls were raped by the Russian soldiers. The next day, the Russians came back to the same place, they took the lady’s father, who was in his mid-seventies and crippled, tied him to the post in the barn. They brought his daughter in the barn, about ten, and the Russian soldiers raped her in front of her father. Her father was helpless—the only help he could give her was the tears from his eyes.3 2. Harold Information Systems, “The 60 Second History of the Donauschwaben,” c. 2000, online: http://www.banaters.com/banat/60Second.asp?category=history. 3. Alex Leeb, “The Memories of September & October 1944,” last updated October 9, 2012, online: http://www.dvhh.org/banat/history/1940/1944-sept-oct-leeb.htm. 266 | Empowering Memory and Movement [3.135.205.146] Project...

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