Karola Ruth Westheimer (néeSiegel; June 4, 1928 – July 12, 2024), better known asDr. Ruth, was a German and Americansex therapist and talk show host.
Westheimer was born in Germany to aJewish family. As theNazis came to power, her parents sent the 10-year-old girl to a school in Switzerland for safety while they remained behind because of her elderly grandmother.[1] Both were killed inconcentration camps. After World War II, she emigrated to British-controlledMandatory Palestine. At 4 feet 7 inches (140 cm) tall and 17 years of age, she joined theHaganah, and was trained as asniper.[2] On her 20th birthday, she was wounded in action by an exploding shell duringmortar fire on Jerusalem during the1947–1949 Palestine War, and almost lost both feet.
Two years later, Westheimer moved to Paris, France, where she studied psychology at theSorbonne. Immigrating to the United States in 1956, she worked as a maid to put herself through graduate school, earned aMaster of Arts in sociology fromThe New School in 1959, and earned a doctorate at age 42 fromTeachers College, Columbia University, in 1970. Over the next decade, she taught at a number of universities and had a private sex therapy practice.
Westheimer's media career began in 1980 with the radio call-in showSexually Speaking, which continued until 1990. In 1983 it was the top-rated radio show in the country's largest radio market. She then launched a television show,The Dr. Ruth Show, which by 1985 attracted two million viewers a week. She became known for giving serious advice while being candid, but also warm, cheerful, funny, and respectful, and for her tag phrase: "Get some". In 1984The New York Times noted that she had risen "from obscurity to almost instant stardom."[3][4] She hosted several series on theLifetime Channel and other cable television networks from 1984 to 1993. She became a household name and major cultural figure, appeared on several network TV shows, co-starred in a movie withGérard Depardieu, appeared on the cover ofPeople, sang on aTom Chapin album, appeared in several commercials, and hostedPlayboy videos. She was the author of 45 books on sex and sexuality.
I come from Nazi Germany. And the one thing I've learned is that you must stand up for what you believe.[5]
Westheimer was born Karola Ruth Siegel, on June 4, 1928, in the small village of Wiesenfeld (now part ofKarlstadt am Main), inGermany.[6][7] She was the only child ofOrthodox Jews, Irma (née Hanauer), a housekeeper, and Julius Siegel, anotions wholesaler and son of the family for whom Irma worked.[8] From the age of one, she lived in an apartment inFrankfurt with her parents and her paternal grandmother, Selma, who was a widow.[9][10] She was given an early grounding in Judaism by her father, who took her regularly to the synagogue in theNordend district of Frankfurt, where they lived.[11]
Her father, 38 years old at the time, was taken away by theNazis, who sent him to theDachau concentration camp a week afterKristallnacht, the "Night of Broken Glass", when Nazis burned down 10,000 Jewish stores as well as Jewish homes and synagogues, in November 1938.[12][13][14] She cried while her father was taken away byGestapo men who loaded him on a truck, while her grandmother handed the Nazis money, pleading, "Take good care of my son."[11][15][12]
Westheimer's mother and grandmother decided thatNazi Germany was too dangerous for her, due to the growing Nazi violence. Therefore, a few weeks later, in January 1939, they sent her on theKindertransport, an organized Jewish children's rescue train to Switzerland, though she desperately did not want to leave.[11][16] Ruth, then aged 10, was never hugged again as a child.[17]
She arrived at an orphanage of a Jewish charity inHeiden, Switzerland, as one of 300 Jewish children, some as young as six years of age.[9][18] By the end of World War II, nearly all of them were orphans, as their parents never made it out of Germany and were murdered by the Nazis.[18] In the orphanage she was given cleaning responsibilities and took on the role of a caregiver and mother-like figure to the younger children.[11] She remained at the orphanage for six years.[10] Girls at the orphanage were not allowed to take classes at the local school. However, a boy at the school secretly loaned her his textbooks at night so she could read them in secret and continue her education.[15][19]
While at the Swiss orphanage, Westheimer corresponded with her mother and grandmother via letters. Their letters ceased in 1941,[7][12] when her parents and her paternal grandmother were deported toŁódź Ghetto on 20 October 1941.[20] There, her father and his mother died in 1942.[21][22] Before learning about this later in her life, she had believed that her father was murdered in theAuschwitz concentration camp in 1942.[23] There is no information about the specific circumstances of her mother's death. In the database at theYad Vashem World Holocaust Remembrance Center, Westheimer's mother is categorized asverschollen, or "disappeared/murdered".[23] In addition to Westheimer's parents, all of her other relatives lost their lives during theHolocaust.[5]
For many years, she lived with an "irrational guilt"; she thought that if she had stayed in Germany, she could have saved her parents. Later, she said the guilt had been replaced by an admiration for her parents' sacrifice in sending her to safety, saying: "I would not have the courage to send my own children away like that."[7]
After World War II ended, Westheimer decided to immigrate to British-controlledMandatory Palestine at 16 years of age.[24][11]After she immigrated to Mandatory Palestine in September 1945, at the age of 17, she joinedKibbutz Ramat David and worked in agriculture. Told her name was too German, she changed her name from Karola to her middle name, Ruth and went by Ruth K. Siegel, retaining Karola as her middle initial in case her parents came looking for her.[25] She "first had sexual intercourse on a starry night, in a haystack, without contraception."[26][24][23] She later toldThe New York Times that "I am not happy about that, but I know much better now and so does everyone who listens to my radio program."[27] Next, she lived onMoshav Nahalal, and then, she lived onKibbutz Yagur.[26] She then moved toJerusalem in 1948 to study early childhood education.[14][26]
Though I am only 4 feet 7 inches tall, with a gun in my hand I am the equal of a soldier who's 6 feet 7 — and perhaps even at a slight advantage, as I make a smaller target.
Westheimer joined theHaganah JewishZionist underground paramilitary organization (later, theIsrael Defense Forces) in Jerusalem.[29][28][30] Because of her diminutive height of 4 feet 7 inches (140 cm), she was trained as ascout andsniper.[27][30][31] Of this experience, she said, "I never killed anybody, but I know how to throwhand grenades and shoot."[32] She became an ace sniper, and learned to assemble a rifle in the dark.[27][14] When she was 90 years old, she demonstrated that she was still able to put together aSten gun with her eyes closed.[33]
In 1948, on her 20th birthday, Westheimer was seriously wounded in action by an explodingshell during amortar fire attack on Jerusalem during the1948 Palestine war; the explosion killed two girls who were right next to her.[34][30][26] Temporarily paralyzed and with two injured feet (one missing a top portion), she spent months in a recuperative ward before walking again.[35][36][37] In 2018 she said that she still visited Israel every year, and felt that it was her real home, and the following year said that she was and is a Zionist.[26][38]
In 1950, at the age of 22, Westheimer married and moved to France with her first husband, David Bar-Haim, an Israeli soldier who had been accepted to medical school in Paris.[11][39][25] There, she studied psychology under psychologistJean Piaget at theUniversity of Paris (the Sorbonne), and earned an undergraduate degree despite not having had a high school education[40][41][42] and supported herself by teachingkindergarten.[39] She then taught psychology at the Sorbonne.[42][43] Her first marriage ended as Bar-Heim eventually gave up his studies and decided to return to Israel while Westheimer remained in Paris to continue her studies. They divorced in 1955.[25]
In 1956, using a 5,000German marksrestitution cheque paid by the German government to children whose education was disrupted by the Holocaust, sheimmigrated to the United States with her French boyfriend, Dan Bommer, settling inWashington Heights, Manhattan. They married and had a daughter, Miriam, but soon divorced.[39][25][44][45][46] She worked as a maid, initially for 75 cents an hour and later for one dollar an hour (equal to $11.57 today) to put herself through graduate school.[47][48][49]
Described as "GrandmaFreud" and the "Sister Wendy of Sexuality", Westheimer helped revolutionize talk about sex and sexuality on radio and television, advocating for speaking openly about sexual issues.[63] She fielded questions ranging from women who did not haveorgasms, to the best time of day to have sex (the morning), to men withpremature ejaculations, toforeplay, tooral sex, tosexual fantasies ("embrace them"; "If you want to believe that a whole football team is in bed with you, that's fine"), tomasturbation, toerections, tosexual positions, to theG-spot.[62][64][65] She stressed that: "anything that two consenting adults do in the privacy of their bedroom or kitchen floor is all right with me".[61][66] Asked a question as to having sex with an animal, she responded: "I'm not a veterinarian."[67] She spoke out against engaging in any sexual activity under pressure. She was against the use of drugs, and said she cannot deal withsadomasochism andpedophilia.[62] She educated her listeners aboutsexually transmitted diseases,[68][69][61] and spoke out strongly in favor of having sex, in favor ofcontraception being used, in favor of the availability of abortion as an aid for contraception failures, in favor of sex within relationships rather thanone-night stands, in favor of funding for Planned Parenthood, and in favor of research onAIDS. She became known for giving serious advice while being candid and funny, but warm, cheerful, and respectful; and for her tag phrase: "Get some."[61][70][71] JournalistJoyce Wadler described her as a "world class charmer".[72]
One journalist described her voice as "a cross betweenHenry Kissinger andMinnie Mouse".[73] She was noted for having "an accent only a psychologist could love", one that was "dripping chicken soup."[63][42][74]
In 1984The New York Times noted that on radio the 55-year-old had risen "from obscurity to almost instant stardom."[75] Journalist Jeannette Catsoulis wrote later inThe New York Times, "It's hard to explain how revolutionary her humor, candor and sexual explicitness seemed for the time."[76]
Westheimer's media career began in 1980 when she was 52 years old, and her radio show,Sexually Speaking, debuted onWYNY-FM in New York City. In it, she answered questions called in by listeners, and the show became nationally syndicated.[44][11][78] She was offered the opportunity after she gave a lecture to New York broadcasters about the need forsex education programming to help deal with issues ofcontraception and unwanted pregnancies. Betty Elam, the community affairs manager at WYNY, was impressed with her talk and offered Westheimer $25 per week to makeSexually Speaking, which started as a 15-minute show airing every Sunday at midnight, which was historically a dead time.[79][80]
By 1981, as the show attracted 250,000 listeners every week despite the network not doing any promotion for it—growing simply by word of mouth—it was extended to be one hour long on Sunday nights, starting at 10 pm.[80][44][65] It was soon picked up by 90 stations across the United States, and it ran for a decade.[9][65] The show broke taboos of the time against speaking publicly and explicitly about sex.[81]The New York Times described it as one of the station's "oddest shows", and among its biggest draws.[82][61] A New York University professor of human sexuality made listening to her show a class assignment.[61] When the station offered a "Dr. Ruth T-shirt" ("Sex on Sunday? You Bet!"), it received 3,500 orders.[61][83]
By 1982, her show was WYNY's top-rated phone-in talk show.[84] SingerPattie Brooks recorded a song as an ode to her, "Dr. Ruth," with a trendy, dance-rock tinged, high pressure beat.[85][86][87]
By 1983 her show was the top-rated radio show in the country's largest radio market.[88] In 1984NBC Radio begansyndicating the radio program nationwide—it was now heard in 93 markets.[49] She went on to produce her radio show until 1990.[89]
In 1984, Westheimer began hosting several television programs on theLifetime TV network, and one in syndication. Her first show wasGood Sex! With Dr. Ruth Westheimer, airing for a half hour at 10 pm on weeknights. She ended each show by reminding her audience: "Have good sex!"[90]
The show was expanded in 1985 to a full hour, and its name was changed toThe Dr. Ruth Show. During each of her live shows, 3,000 callers tried to get through, and the show attracted an average of 450,000 viewers a night, double the audience previously watching at that hour, and attracted more viewers than any other show on Lifetime; that number rose to two million homes a week.[90][49][91] In April 1985 she appeared on the cover ofPeople.[62] That year she also appeared as an actress in the French romantic comedy filmUne Femme ou Deux (One Woman or Two), starringGérard Depardieu andSigourney Weaver, playing the part of a wealthy philanthropist.[92]
Dr. Ruth's Game of Good Sex was released in 1985.[93][94] A Baltimore distributor said: "I'm going to have to compare this toTrivial Pursuit. The orders overshadow anything we've had in our company's 100-year history."[83]Dr. Ruth's Computer Game of Good Sex was a hit, released in 1986 for theCommodore 64,MS-DOS, andApple II.[95][96][97]
Westheimer in 2018
In 1987, she began a separate half-hour syndicated series on many broadcast stations calledAsk Dr. Ruth, which was co-hosted by Larry Angelo. Westheimer's friendEleanor Bergstein, the writer of the 1987 romantic drama dance filmDirty Dancing, attempted to cast her to play Mrs. Schumacher in the film (withJoel Grey as her husband).[98][99] She backed out when she learned the character is a thief.[100][101][61]
She appeared on aTV Guide coverin 1988. Dr. Ruth returned to the Lifetime network in 1988 withThe All New Dr. Ruth Show. That was followed in 1989 by two teen advice shows calledWhat's Up, Dr. Ruth?, and a call-in show,You're on the Air with Dr. Ruth in 1990.[102] That year she also appeared in an episode of the television seriesTall Tales & Legends as the "Mysterious Stranger."
In 1990, Westheimer starred in anABC sitcom pilot,Dr. Ruth's House, which aired as a one-time special in June of that year.[108][109] ABC did not move forward in turning the pilot into a series.
In 1993, Westheimer and Israeli TV hostArad Nir hosted a talk show inHebrew titledMin Tochnit, on the newly openedIsraeli Channel 2. The show was similar to her U.S.Sexually Speaking show. The name of the show,Min Tochnit, is a play on words: literally "Kind of a program", but "Min" (מין) in Hebrew also means "sex" and "gender".[110] 1993 and 1994 saw the publication of "Dr. Ruth's Good Sex Night-to-Night Calendar."[111]
In 1994, she appeared in a computer game, an interactiveCD-ROM adaptation ofDr. Ruth's Encyclopedia of Sex released forWindows and a PhilipsCD-i.[112][113][114]
In 1995, she hosted a series ofPlayboy instructional videos entitled "Making Love". She also wrote a column distributed both nationally and internationally by theKing Features Syndicate.[5][59] In 1996, she co-authoredHeavenly Sex, on Judaism and sex, in which she wrote: "The great rabbiSimeon ben-Halafta called thepenis the great peacemaker of the home."[5] She referred to theBook of Ruth as encouraging single women to initiate sex (providing the relationship leads to marriage), cited aTalmudic mandate that an unemployed man must make love to his wife every day, and mentioned the writings of a 12th-century rabbi who suggested that couples use different positions while having sex.[5]
In 2000, she appeared on Grammy Award winnerTom Chapin's albumThis Pretty Planet, in the song "Two Kinds of Seagulls", in which she and Chapin sing in a duet of various animals that reproduce sexually.[125] "It takes two to tingle" says the song.[126] That year, she also made a TV commercial forEntenmann's Raspberry Danish Twist.[127]
Between 2001 and 2007, Westheimer made regular appearances on thePBS children's television seriesBetween the Lions as "Dr. Ruth Wordheimer" in a spoof of her therapist role, in which she helps anxious readers and spellers overcome their fear oflong words. In 2002, she received a nomination for aGrammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album for Children, forTimeless Tales and Music of Our Time.[128] In 2003–04, she made 10 appearances as a panelist on the game showHollywood Squares.
Speaking ofthe Holocaust in 2021, Westheimer said: "We must keep saying to the young people, 'Think of these words —never again! Never again!' All of this must never happen again."[13]
Westheimer was an accomplishedethnographer. Her studies in this field included theEthiopian Jews,Papua New Guinea'sTrobriand Islanders, and theDruze, a sect originating fromShia Islam now residing in Israel, Syria, and Lebanon. The latter were the subjects of her 2007PBS documentaryThe Olive and the Tree: The Secret Strength of the Druze, and a book of the same title.[140][141] She was also the Executive Producer for PBS documentariesSurviving Salvation and No Missing Link,Shifting Sands: Bedouin Women at the Crossroads, andThe Unknown Face of Islam (on theCircassians).[111]
When I was looking for a job in the United States I was told to take speech lessons, but they were a dollar an hour—too expensive. Now,Debra Jo Rupp [who plays me inBecoming Dr. Ruth] had to take speech coaching to learn my accent! It's good to be Dr. Ruth!
In 2019, the documentaryAsk Dr. Ruth directed byRyan White was in theaters, and was made available onHulu, as she approached her 90th birthday.[147][148] it won a4th Critics' Choice Documentary Award in 2019 as "Most Compelling Living Subject of a Documentary," and was a19th AARP Movies for Grownups Awards nominee in 2019 for "Best Documentary."[149][150] Having previously avoided discussing her early years and how the Holocaust affected her family and herself, Westheimer believed that current events made it necessary for her to "stand up and be counted". She said that seeing child refugees being separated from their parents upset her, because her own story was reflected in what they were going through.[151]
Westheimer was married three times, the first time to Israeli soldier and medical student David Bar-Heim for five years, and the second time briefly to Dan Bommer, with whom she had her daughter, Miriam, who later took the last name of her stepfather.[25][37][54] She said each of her marriages played an important role in her relationship advice, but after two divorces it was her third marriage, at age 32 to Holocaust survivor Manfred 'Fred' Westheimer, that was the "real marriage".[44][81][32] She met Fred on aski tow inthe Catskills.[5] Fred, too, had escapedNazi Germany.[165] WhenDiane Sawyer, interviewing the couple for the TV show60 Minutes asked her husband about their sex life, he answered, "The shoemaker's children have no shoes."[12] Their marriage lasted 36 years, until his death in 1997.[54]
She had two children: Dr. Miriam Yael Westheimer, an educator, author, and chief program officer of HIPPY International, which developsearly childhood education andliteracy programs,[166] and who lived in Israel for six years and later married Joel Henry Einleger, andJoel Westheimer, a professor at theUniversity of Ottawa; she had four grandchildren.[32][60][167] She said: "I was so short – 4 feet 7 inches – that I couldn't believe that anything could grow inside of me."[168]
In December 2014, Westheimer was a guest at a wedding inthe Bronx. The groom, Rabbi Benjamin Goldschmidt, was the great-grandson of the woman who had helped rescue Westheimer from Nazi Germany.[169]
Among her concerns in the 21st century was loneliness of people.[69] In 2023, Gov.Kathy Hochul of New York appointed Westheimer as the inaugural "Loneliness Ambassador".[170]
In her final years, Westheimer lived in the cluttered three-bedroom apartment on 190th Street "inWashington Heights where she raised her two children and became famous, in that order".[171][172] She stayed there, she said in 1995, to be near the twosynagogues of which she was a member (one of which is the Reform synagogue the Hebrew Tabernacle Congregation of Washington Heights, and the other of which isConservative Synagogue Adath Israel of Riverdale; she was also a member of theOrthodox synagogue Ohav Shalom until it closed), theYMHA of Washington Heights andInwood of which she was president for 11 years, and a "still sizable community of German Jewish World War II refugees".[45][173][174] She explained: "Because of my experience with the Holocaust, I don't like to lose friends."[5]
Westheimer, Ruth K.; Mark, Jonathan (1996).Heavenly Sex: Sexuality in the Jewish Tradition. New York: Bloomsbury Academic.ISBN978-0-8264-0904-1.
Westheimer, Ruth K.; Yagoda, Ben (1997).The Value of Family: A Blueprint for the 21st Century. New York: Grand Central Publishing.ISBN978-0-446-67336-5.
Westheimer, Ruth K. (2001).Rekindling Romance for Dummies – Conversation Cards. Canoga Park, Cal.: Hungry Mind, Inc.ISBN978-1-890760-53-3.
Westheimer, Ruth K. (2001).Romance For Dummies (Miniature Editions). Philadelphia: Running Press.ISBN978-0-7624-1244-0.
Westheimer, Ruth K. (2001).Who Am I? Where Did I Come From?. New York: Golden Books.ISBN978-0-307-10618-6.
Westheimer, Ruth K.; Leh, Pierre A. (2003).Conquering the Rapids of Life: Making the Most of Midlife Opportunities. Lanham, Maryland: Taylor Trade Publishing.ISBN978-1-58979-012-4.
Westheimer, Ruth K. (2003).Musically Speaking: A Life Through Song (Personal Takes). Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.ISBN978-0-8122-3746-7.
Westheimer, Ruth K.; Leh, Pierre A. (2005).52 lecciones para comunicar amor : sugerencias, poesía y consejos para conectarse con el ser amado. Translated by María de la Luz Broissin Fernández (Spanish ed.). Selector, México: Selector.ISBN978-9706438317.
Westheimer, Ruth; Sedan, Gil (2007).The Olive and the Tree: The Secret Strength of the Druze. New York: Lantern Books.ISBN978-1-59056-102-7.
Westheimer, Ruth K.; Kaplan, Steven (2013).Surviving Salvation: The Ethiopian Jewish Family in Transition (Kindle ed.). Sanger, Cal.: The Write Thought, Inc.ASINB00CYP81YG.
Westheimer, Ruth K.; Lehu, Pierre A. (2015).Lebe mit Lust und Liebe: Meine Ratschläge für ein erfülltes Leben (German ed.). Freiburg, Germany: Verlag Herder.ISBN978-3-451-34818-1.
Westheimer, Ruth K.; Lehu, Pierre A. (2018).Roller Coaster Grandma: The Amazing Story of Dr. Ruth. Springfield, New Jersey: Apples & Honey Press.ISBN978-1-68115-532-6.
Westheimer, Ruth K.; Lehu, Pierre A.; Gilbert, Allison (2024).The Joy of Connections: 100 Ways to Beat Loneliness and Live a Happier and More Meaningful Life. New York: Rodale Books.ISBN978-0-59373-622-7.
^Thompson, Kathleen (March 1, 2009)."Ruth Westheimer". Jewish Women's Archive.Archived from the original on August 11, 2016. RetrievedDecember 18, 2016.
^abcdefghDudar, Helen (January 10, 1988)."What She Did For Love".The New York Times.Archived from the original on December 19, 2021. RetrievedDecember 19, 2021.
^Arolsen Archives: Deportation from Frankfurt/Main to Lodz, 1941/10/20, Reference Code8229601
^Das Bundesarchiv, Memorial Book, Victims of the Persecution of Jews under the National Socialist Tyranny in Germany 1933 – 1945: Siegel, Julius Arnold (https://www.bundesarchiv.de/gedenkbuch/en960828 : accessed 21 August 2024)
^Kaufman, Joanne (November 29, 2013)."Dr. Ruth Westheimer: Her Bedrooms Are Off Limits".The New York Times.Archived from the original on August 29, 2023. RetrievedJuly 30, 2015.'I wanted it badly because of the view,' said the radio and television sex therapist and author who's known simply as Dr. Ruth (the honorific comes courtesy of her Ph.D. in education).
^abcdRahel Musleah (January 5, 2015)."Ruth Westheimer".Hadassah Magazine.Archived from the original on August 29, 2023. RetrievedDecember 22, 2021.
^abLilly Gelman (February 20, 2020)."Gen Z Meets Dr. Ruth".Moment.Archived from the original on December 23, 2021. RetrievedDecember 22, 2021.
^Kleinfield, N. r. (November 28, 1981)."Sounds of Success at WYNY".The New York Times.Archived from the original on December 18, 2021. RetrievedDecember 18, 2021.
^abGeist, William E. (December 1, 1985)."MERCHANDISING DR. RUTH".The New York Times.Archived from the original on December 29, 2021. RetrievedDecember 30, 2021.
^Alexander, Ron (July 16, 1982)."The Evening Hours".The New York Times.Archived from the original on December 18, 2021. RetrievedDecember 18, 2021.
^Kleinfield, N. r. (December 1, 1985)."Toys the Big Kids Are Buying".The New York Times.Archived from the original on December 19, 2021. RetrievedDecember 19, 2021.
^Wolf, Michelle Andrea; Kielwasser, Aldred P. (1991).Gay People, Sex, and the Media. New York City; London: The Haworth Press. p. 142.ISBN0-86656-936-7.Archived from the original on August 29, 2023. RetrievedOctober 28, 2020.
^Brawarsky, Sandee (December 21, 2014)."Vows Taking Their Sweet Time".The New York Times.Archived from the original on December 27, 2014. RetrievedDecember 27, 2014.
Israel
Haganah
.jpg)
