Irving Halperin was one of the first scholars to “rekindle the interest in writing about the Holocaust in the early ’50s,” said Murray Baumgarten, a professor at U.C. Santa Cruz. “He was a great literary presence in the city for Jewish writing.”
A professor emeritus of English and creative writing at San Francisco State University, Halperin died Sunday of cancer. He was 78.
A native of Chicago, Halperin served in the military in World War II, but was not sent overseas. After obtaining his doctorate at Washington University in St. Louis, he moved to San Francisco in 1959. He taught for 40 years at S.F. State and also at the Fromm Institute at the University of San Francisco after he retired.
“It was very gratifying to him to teach at the end of his career there,” said Bill Daleski, a retired Hebrew University professor who met Halperin when the San Francisco professor was on sabbatical in Jerusalem. “The same students came back year after year.”
Nancy McDermid, dean of the College of Humanities at S.F. State, first met Halperin when she began work there in 1965 and called him “a dear friend.” Even after he retired in 1992, he continued to teach occasional courses at S.F. State until last summer, she said.
“To the very end, he continued to have the excitement of a teacher just discovering the immense power the written word has to move us, by moments confuse us, and give us glimpses of whole lives,” McDermid said. “He was still so excited about working with students and what could happen in the classroom.”
Halperin also taught at the University of Haifa, and was a Fulbright professor in both India and Germany.
The author of two books, “Messengers From the Dead: Literature of the Holocaust,” and “Here I Am: A Jew in Today’s Germany,” he wrote many book reviews, articles and short stories, and was a member of PEN. In a 1995 Jewish Bulletin article, he wrote about his wish to become a grandfather, “but my children aren’t cooperating.”
A lover of Jewish American literature, not only was Halperin a “pioneer in Holocaust literature,” but also he was especially fond of Saul Bellow’s work, said his wife, Jill Kneeter Halperin.
“He really believed that literature taught us a lot about life, and he believed in the philosophy that Bellow expressed,” she said, that a good man lives by accepting responsibility and doing what had to be done. “That was the way he lived his life.”
A noble man who disdained small talk, Halperin was “the kind of person who really connected with people at a deep level,” his wife said.
A man who counted authors Cynthia Ozick and Elie Wiesel among his friends, “he always went for the essence and people felt like they had met somebody who was very unusual man,” she added.
In addition to Kneeter Halperin, Halperin is survived by a former spouse, Tam Greene, of San Francisco; sons Daniel Halperin of Oakland and Jonathan Halperin of Seattle; daughter Dina Halperin of San Francisco; and brother Samuel Halperin of Washington, D.C.
A memorial service will be held at 12:30 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 17 at Congregation Emanu-El, 2 Lake St., S.F.