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.
“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.
In response to the conviction of his son for lying about his drug addiction when purchasing a gun, Joe Biden reiterated that he would “accept the outcome of this case and continue to respect the judicial process as Hunter considers an appeal.” What he did not say was … [Laurie Baron]
(To Tune of Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’): I’ve heard there was a public trial/ Of a president for deeds so vile/ The jury didn’t believe what he was sellin’. … {Laurie Baron]
Judge Merchan has the difficult decision of whether to sentence Trump to jail or another appropriate punishment. Given that sentencing Trump to prison will probably cause too much of a political uproar, here are my suggestions of fitting punishments. [Laurie Baron]
Doesn’t Major League Baseball realize how insulting it is to dogs to know that marlins and devil rays have teams bearing their names even though neither of those animals can run the bases or catch and retrieve balls? Why honor venomous diamondbacks when dog bites are rarely fatal? [Elona Baron]
Alito claims that his wife raised the flag to protest a “F**k Trump” sign on a neighbor’s lawn. I anticipate discovering evidence that points to a more damning explanation. [Laurie Baron]
I heard a shocking story about how South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem killed her 14-month-old wirehaired pointer Cricket for being rambunctious. I am outraged and plan to mobilize dogs from around the country to set up a doghouse encampment to surround her residence. [Elona Baron as told to Laurie Baron]
What scares me more is that some condos and independent living communities either ban dogs or require that they weigh no more than 25 pounds. This is blatant sizeism. At a svelte 50 pounds I don’t want to take Ozempic to get down to the qualifying weight. Of course, I could go on the canine anorexic diet of eating lots of grass and purging. [“Elona” Baron]
Vladimir Putin won 87.3 % of the votes cast in the Russian presidential election. But there are telltale signs that the Russian election was rigged. [Laurie Baron]
Using AI and deep fakes, FOX’s coverage of Joe Biden’s State of the Union speech would have looked totally different than the version of it aired on CNN and MSNBC. [Laurie Baron]
These are not necessarily the films I would choose if my favorite films won, but the ones that seem most likely to win based on monitoring Hollywood trade publications.[Laurie Baron]