Lawrence Baron

Laurie Baron

Lawrence (Laurie) Baron, now retired, served as the Nasatir Professor of Modern Jewish History at San Diego State University. He served from 1988 to 2006 as director of SDSU’s Lipinsky Institute for Judaic Studies. He was the founder in 1995 of the Western Jewish Studies Association.

He writes two satire columns for San Diego Jewish World: “Humoring the Headlines” under his byline, and “Hounding the Headlines,” under the byline of his dog Elona.

Books to his credit, available on Amazon, include:

Projecting the Holocaust into the Present: The Changing Focus of Contemporary Holocaust Cinema

The Modern Jewish Experience in World Cinema

The eclectic anarchism of Erich Muhsam (Men & movements in the history & philosophy of anarchism)

His most recent articles are:

“Making Room for the Jews: The House I Live In (1945),” AJS Perspectives, Summer 2023, 86-88.  

“The Revolt of Job: Salvaging the Lost World of Rural Hungarian Hasidim,” Journal of Jewish Identities, 16:1-2 (January/July 2023), 181-198.

“Persistent Parallels, Resistant Particularities: Holocaust Analogies and Avoidance in Armenian Genocide Centennial Cinema, in Armenian and Jewish Experience between Expulsion and Destruction, ed. Sarah M. Ross and Regina Randhofer (Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2021), 267-296.

“The Pioneering American Jewish Women Directors from Elaine May to Claudia Weill,” Jews and Gender (Studies in Jewish Civilization), ed. Leonard Greenspoon (W. Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2021), 217-243.

Hounding the Headlines: The Golden Deceiver’s Cabinet

Upon declaring our independence from British bulldogs in 1776, all creatures living in this land established the United States of Animals whose government parallels that of the human USA.  This year the ostriches convinced us to put our heads in the sand and elect the Golden Deceiver while parrots incessantly repeated his lies.  Since the Deceiver is rabid, he has nominated dangerous beasts to serve in his cabinet. [Elona Baron as barked to Laurie Baron]

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Lawrence Baron, Staff and Bylined Contributors, Trivia, Humor & Satire, USA

OpEd: What I’m Politically Thankful For

My son asked me what I’m thankful for this year. I gave the standard answer: my creature comforts, dog, family, friends, health, and house. Then he queried if I was grateful that Trump was elected president. I struggled to find some reasons I hadn’t abandoned all my hope for the future. Here’s what I came up with. {Laurie Baron]

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Lawrence Baron, Opinion, Staff and Bylined Contributors, USA

Satire: Weaponizing the Weather

Reacting to the ferocity of Hurricane Helene, Marjorie Taylor Greene posted on X: “Yes, they can control the weather. It’s ridiculous for anyone to lie and say it can’t be done.” Although Greene doesn’t say who “they” are, “they probably are the same Jews she blamed for igniting California’s wildfires in 2021 with giant space lasers. [Laurie Baron]

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Antisemitism, California, Lawrence Baron, Staff and Bylined Contributors, Trivia, Humor & Satire, USA

Hounding the Headlines: Protecting Pets from People

Watching the news with my human, I heard that J.D. Vance claims that Haitian immigrants have eaten cats in Springfield, Ohio.  As a dog, I know that cats don’t taste good enough to be ground up in my food.  If they were delicious, I can guarantee that some entrepreneurial person would recycle dead ones into a new product called The Farmer’s Cat.  [Elona Baron]

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Lawrence Baron, Staff and Bylined Contributors, The World We Share, Trivia, Humor & Satire, USA