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.
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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.
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By Laurie Baron SAN DIEGO — The Z in the latest summer blockbuster World War Z stands for zombies, but bloggers on the Aljazeera English website claim the Z stands for Zionist propaganda. On the other hand, Jeffrey Goldberg of The Bloomberg View calls the movie “’the most pro-Israel movie ever made. Or at […]
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Lawrence BaronBy Laurie Baron SAN DIEGO — While baby boomers expect a Jewish film to deal with Jewish subjects and star overtly Jewish actors and actresses like Woody Allen, Mel Brooks, Richard Benjamin, Goldie Hawn, and Barbra Streisand, viewers born after 1980 are more likely to think of raunchy “bromance” comedies featuring Ben Stiller, Adam Sandler,
The Wandering Review: ‘This Is the End’ Read More »
Lawrence BaronFill the Void, Directed by Rama Burshtein (Israel: 2012) By Laurie Baron SAN DIEGO — When ultra-Orthodox Jews are the focus of films, they usually wrestle with conflicts revolving around individual secular freedoms versus communal religious obligations. In The Chosen (1981) Reuven and his father, acculturated conservative Jews, introduce Danny, the heir to his father
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Lawrence BaronDeceptive Practice: The Mysteries and Mentors of Ricky Jay, directed by Molly Bernstein and Alan Edelstein (USA: 2012); Opening Ken Cinema on May 24 By Laurie Baron SAN DIEGO–You may not know the name Ricky Jay, but you will recognize his face and voice from numerous film voiceovers, roles in movies and television series,
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Lawrence BaronBy Laurie Baron SAN DIEGO — Like every song, “Hava Negila” has a history. Roberta Grossman’s fun and informative documentary traces the evolution of the song from the “Ukraine to YouTube.” In the entertaining course of her film, she discredits many shibboleths about this infectious tune: it has not always had lyrics; it was not
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Lawrence BaronBy Laurie Baron SAN DIEGO– There’s a new movie venue in San Diego. The Media Arts Center San Diego recently began screening films in its renovated facility at 2921 El Cajon Boulevard between 30th and Kansas Streets. Dedicated to the “inclusion of underrepresented communities in the media arts field and the portrayal of accurate
The Wandering Review: ‘La Rafle’ Read More »
Lawrence BaronBy Laurie Baron SAN DIEGO — Having studied and taught about the Holocaust for 37 years, I realize that many stories from of it remain untold because their participants died while it was occurring or remained silent to rebuild their lives and avoid traumatizing their children. When spelunker Chris Nicola journeyed to the Ukraine in
The Wandering Review: ‘No Place on Earth’ Read More »
Lawrence BaronBy Laurie Baron SAN DIEGO –Brian Helgeland’s 42 is an old fashioned Hollywood biopic. Spanning Jackie Robinson’s recruitment by the Brooklyn Dodgers and first year in the National League, the film presents idealized depictions of both Robinson played by Chadwick Boseman and Branch Rickey played by Harrison Ford. Ford steals the movie like Robinson stole
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Lawrence BaronBy Laurie Baron SAN DIEGO — Growing up in Chicago, Shabbat was not a day of prayer and rest, but for going to the movies. Every Saturday I trundled over to the neighborhood theatre and watched morning screenings of cartoons, capped off with a Flash Gordon episode. After lunch, I’d return for the double feature.
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Lawrence BaronLOS ANGELES –Members of the annual Western Jewish Studies Association Conference will pay tribute to one of its past presidents, Lawrence Baron, PhD., former head of the Lipinsky Institute for Judaic Studies at San Diego State University and, in retirement, a reviewer of Jewish-interest movies for San Diego Jewish World, among other pursuits. At an
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Lawrence Baron, San Diego CountyBy Laurie Baron SAN DIEGO — When you think of Holocaust movies, you conjure up the black and white images of corpses and and skeletal survivors preserved on film by military camera crews as they followed Allied troops liberating concentration and death camps. Feature films like The Pawnbroker or Schindler’s List employ the same
The Wandering Review: ‘Lore’ Read More »
Lawrence BaronBy Laurie Baron SAN DIEGO –Eytan Fox’s Yossi and Jagger (2002) holds a special place in Israeli film history as the first commercially successful mainstream movie about gay lovers. It won two Israeli Television Academy Awards and many prizes at various LGBT film festivals around the world. Its tale of two Israeli male soldiers furtively developing
The Wandering Review: ‘Yossi’ Read More »
Lawrence BaronBy Laurie Baron SAN DIEGO –While I love the San Diego Jewish Film Festival, I have chosen not to favor one film over another by reviewing it here. My hesitance to do so testifies to both the quality and quantity of the motion pictures being screened. The SDJFF is simply a celluloid smorgasbord loaded with
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Lawrence BaronBy Laurie Baron SAN DIEGO — One of the notable things about this year’s Oscar nominations is the absence of films about the Holocaust. I wonder if this is a result of what Simone Schweber has termed, “Holocaust fatigue.” According to her, overexposure to the Holocaust in education and popular culture may have inadvertently desensitized
The Wandering Review: Have the Oscars Tired of the Holocaust? Read More »
Lawrence Baron