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.

Humoring the headlines: December 19, 2014

  By Laurie Baron SAN DIEGO─ One of the proportionate responses to North Korea’s hacking of Sony Pictures that President Obama is considering is taking Dennis Rodman hostage and locking him in a cell with Dick Cheney who relishes the opportunity to wire his defibrillator to Rodman’s body if North Korea ever attempts another cyberattack on […]

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Lawrence Baron, Trivia, Humor & Satire

Humoring the Headlines: December 10, 2014

By Laurie Baron SAN DIEGO — President Obama was diagnosed with acid reflux.  His personal physician surmises that he caught it from Congressional Republicans who repeatedly regurgitate any piece of legislation that he has submitted to them. * Trying to avert a federal takeover, the Cleveland Police Department has banned the sale of toy guns to African

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Lawrence Baron, Trivia, Humor & Satire

Humoring the Headlines: November 20, 2014

By Laurie Baron SAN DIEGO─ Fox News’ reporters are apoplectic about Obama’s Executive Order to defer the deportation of millions of undocumented aliens.  They accuse him of permitting potential carriers of Ebola, drug dealers, felons, and terrorists to remain in the country.  Meanwhile, the FCC has requested the network to change its slogan from “Fair

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Lawrence Baron, Trivia, Humor & Satire

Humoring the Headlines: November 16, 2014

By Laurie Baron SAN DIEGO─ Congressional Republicans are outraged that President Obama plans to issue Executive Orders liberalizing immigration policy during the lame duck period between the elections and the inauguration of the next House and Senate.  Obama justifies his actions as an appropriate response to the last two years of a dead duck Congress.

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Lawrence Baron, Trivia, Humor & Satire

Humoring the Headlines: November 7, 2014

An election wrapup… By Laurie Baron SAN DIEGO─ John Boehner and Mitch McConnell celebrated the GOP’s control of both the House and the Senate by offering to work cooperatively with President Obama to accomplish their aims.  In this spirit of bipartisanship they changed the GOP’s campaign slogan from “Stop Obama; Fire Reid” to “Stop Ebola;

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Lawrence Baron, Trivia, Humor & Satire

Humoring the Headlines: November 5, 2014

By Laurie Baron SAN DIEGO─ Somewhere in hell Joseph McCarthy watched last night’s election results.  Not knowing that television networks now designate Republican states as red and Democratic ones as blue, he looked at the electoral map and commented, “I warned them the communists would take over the United States!” * Boko Haram reported that

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Lawrence Baron, Trivia, Humor & Satire