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.

The Wandering Review: ‘Follow Me: The Yoni Netanyahu Story’

 By Laurie Baron LA JOLLA, California —  The San Diego Jewish Film Festival will kick off its 23rd year with a screening of Follow Me: The Yoni Netanyahu Story on Sunday,  August 19 at 7:15 p.m.  in the Lawrence Family JCC’s Garfield Theatre.  This inspiring documentary directed by Jonathan Gruber and Ari Daniel Pinchot chronicles Yonatan

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Lawrence Baron

The Wandering Review: ‘The Day I Saw Your Heart’

By Laurie Baron SAN DIEGO — Jennifer Devoldère’s The Day I Saw Your Heart is the Jewish Film Club’s (www.jewishfilmclub.com) DVD selection for this July and August.  It stars Mélanie Laurent as X-Ray technician Justine Dhrey and Michel Blanc as her prickly father Eli.  Ju, as she is called, seethes with resentment against Eli.  When she

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Lawrence Baron

The Wandering Review: ‘Dark Horse’ and ‘Take This Waltz’

By Laurie Baron SAN DIEGO — I had been looking forward to last week.  Todd Solondz’s Dark Horse and Sarah Polley’s Take This Waltz were opening in San Diego, and I knew both featured Jewish characters.  Finally, I would have the opportunity to review movies currently playing in theatres for my column.  Unfortunately, depicting Jewish

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Lawrence Baron