Westheimer was born in Germany to a Jewish family. As the
Nazis came to power, her parents sent the ten-year-old girl to a school in Switzerland for safety, remaining behind themselves because of her elderly grandmother.[1] They were both subsequently sent to
concentration camps by the
Gestapo, where they were killed. After World War II ended, she immigrated to British-controlled
Mandatory Palestine. Despite being only 4 feet 7 inches (1.39 m) tall and 17 years of age, she joined the
Haganah, and was trained as a
sniper,[2] but never saw combat.[1] On her 20th birthday, Westheimer was seriously wounded in action by an exploding shell during a
mortar fire attack on Jerusalem during the
1947–1949 Palestine war, and almost lost both of her feet. Moving to Paris, France two years later, she studied psychology at the
Sorbonne. Immigrating to the United States in 1956, she worked as a maid to put herself through graduate school, earned an M.A. degree in sociology from
The New School in 1959, and earned a doctorate at 42 years of age from
Teachers 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 show Sexually Speaking, which continued until 1990. In 1983 it was the top-rated radio show in the area, in the country's largest radio market. She then launched a television show, The Dr. Ruth Show, which by 1985 attracted 2 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 1984 The New York Times noted that she had risen "from obscurity to almost instant stardom."[citation needed] She hosted several series on the
Lifetime 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 with
Gérard Depardieu, appeared on the cover of People, sang on a
Tom Chapin album, appeared in several commercials, and hosted Playboy videos. She is 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.[3]
Westheimer was born Karola Ruth Siegel, in the small village of Wiesenfeld (now part of
Karlstadt am Main), in
Germany.[4][5] She was the only child of
Orthodox Jews, Irma (née Hanauer), a housekeeper, and Julius Siegel, a
notions wholesaler and son of the family for whom Irma worked.[6] From the age of one, she lived in an apartment in
Frankfurt with her parents and her paternal grandmother, Selma, who was a widow.[7][8] She was given an early grounding in
Judaism by her father, who took her regularly to the synagogue in the
Nordend district of Frankfurt, where they lived.[9]
Her father, 38 years old at the time, was taken away by the
Nazis who sent him to the
Dachau concentration camp a week after Kristallnacht, the "Night of Broken Glass" when Nazis burned down 10,000 Jewish stores as well as Jewish homes and synagogues, in November 1938.[7][10][11][12][13] Westheimer cried while her father was taken away by
Gestapo men in glossy black leather boots who loaded him on a truck, while her grandmother handed the Nazis money, pleading, "Take good care of my son."[7][9][14][10]
Switzerland
Westheimer's mother and grandmother decided that
Nazi Germany was too dangerous for her, due to the growing Nazi violence. Therefore, a few weeks later, in January 1939 they sent her on the Kindertransport organized Jewish children's rescue train to Switzerland, though she desperately did not want to leave.[9][15] Westheimer, age 10, from that moment on was never hugged again as a child.[16]
She arrived at an orphanage of a Jewish charity in
Heiden, Switzerland, as one of 300 Jewish children, some as young as six years of age.[7][17] 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.[17] In the orphanage she was given cleaning responsibilities, and took on the role of a caregiver and mother-like figure to the younger children.[9] She remained at the orphanage for six years.[8] Westheimer, being a girl, was not allowed to take classes at the local school. However, a fellow orphan boy would sneak her his textbooks at night so she could read them in secret and continue her education.[14][18]
While at the Swiss orphanage, Westheimer corresponded with her mother and grandmother via letters. Their letters ceased in 1941.[5][10] Her father was murdered in the
Auschwitz concentration camp in 1942.[19] Her mother was killed during the Holocaust, but there is no information about the specific circumstances of her killing. In the database at the
Yad Vashem World Holocaust Remembrance Center, Westheimer's mother is categorized as verschollen, or 'disappeared'/murdered.[19] In addition to Westheimer's parents, all of her other relatives were killed in Nazi concentration camps.[3]
For many years she lived with an "irrational guilt," that if she had stayed in Germany she could have saved her parents. But now she says the guilt has 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."[5]
Israel
After World War II ended, Westheimer decided to immigrate to British-controlled
Mandatory Palestine at 16 years of age.[20][9]Immigrating there in September 1945, at 17 she joined and worked in agriculture at
Kibbutz Ramat David, changed her name from Karola to her middle name Ruth, and "first had sexual intercourse on a starry night, in a haystack, without contraception."[21][11][20][13][19] She later told The 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."[22] She next lived on
Moshav Nahalal, and then
Kibbutz Yagur.[21] She then moved to
Jerusalem in 1948 to study early childhood education.[12][21]
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 the
Haganah Jewish
Zionist underground paramilitary organization (later, the
Israel Defense Forces) in Jerusalem.[24][25][23][26] Because of her diminutive height of 4 ft 7 in (1.40 m), she was trained as a
scout and
sniper.[22][26][27] Of this experience, she said, "I never killed anybody, but I know how to throw hand grenades and shoot."[28] She became an ace sniper, and learned to assemble a rifle in the dark.[22][12] When she was 90 years old, she demonstrated that she was still able to put together a
Sten gun with her eyes closed.[29]
In 1948, on her 20th birthday, Westheimer was seriously wounded in action by an exploding
shell during a
mortar fire attack on Jerusalem during the
1947–1949 Palestine war; the explosion killed two girls who were right next to her.[30][23][26][21] She had near-fatal injuries; she was temporarily paralyzed, almost lost both of her feet, the top of one of her feet was blown off, and it was several months of recuperating in a ward before she was able to walk again.[31][7][26][13][23][20][32][33] 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.[21][34]
France
In 1950, at the age of 22, Westheimer moved to France.[9] There she studied psychology under psychologist
Jean Piaget at the
University of Paris (the Sorbonne), and earned an undergraduate degree despite not having had a high school education.[35][36][37][38][39] She then taught psychology at the Sorbonne.[38][40]
—Ruth Westheimer, upon being asked for advice as to how to have oral sex with a man.[61]
Described as "Grandma
Freud" and the "
Sister Wendy of Sexuality", Dr. Ruth helped revolutionize talk about sex and sexuality on radio and television, advocating for speaking openly about sexual issues.[62] She fielded questions ranging from women who did not have
orgasms, to the best time of day to have sex (the morning), to men with
premature ejaculations, to
foreplay, to
oral sex, to
sexual fantasies ("embrace them"; "If you want to believe that a whole football team is in bed with you, that's fine"), to
masturbation, to
erections, to
sexual positions, to the
G-spot.[61][63][64] She stressed that: "anything that two consenting adults do in the privacy of their bedroom or kitchen floor is all right with me."[60][65] Asked a question as to having sex with an animal, she responded: "I'm not a veterinarian."[66] She spoke out against engaging in any sexual activity under pressure, and against
pedophilia.[61] She spoke out strongly in favor of having sex, in favor of
contraception being used, in favor of the availability of
abortion as an aid for contraception failures, in favor of sex within relationships rather than
one-night stands, in favor of funding for Planned Parenthood, and in favor of research on
AIDS, and educated her listeners about
sexually transmitted diseases.[67][68][60] She became known for giving serious advice while being candid and funny, but warm, cheerful, and respectful; and for her tag phrase: "Get some".[38][60][69][70] Journalist
Joyce Wadler described her as a "world class charmer."[71]
One journalist described her voice as "a cross between
Henry Kissinger and
Minnie Mouse".[72] She was noted for having "an accent only a psychologist could love", one that was "dripping chicken soup."[62][38][73]
In 1984 The New York Times noted that on radio the 55-year-old had risen "from obscurity to almost instant stardom."[74] Journalist Jeannette Catsoulis wrote later in The New York Times, "It's hard to explain how revolutionary her humor, candor and sexual explicitness seemed for the time."[75]
1980–1989
When it comes to sex, the most important six inches are the ones between the ears.
Dr. Ruth's media career began in 1980 when she was 52 years old, and her radio show, Sexually Speaking, debuted on
WYNY-FM in New York City. In it, she answered questions called in by listeners, and the show ultimately became nationally syndicated.[41][58][9][77] She was offered the opportunity after she gave a lecture to New York broadcasters about the need for
sex education programming to help deal with issues of
contraception and unwanted pregnancies. Betty Elam, the community affairs manager at WYNY, was impressed with her talk and offered Westheimer $25 per week to make Sexually Speaking, which started as a 15-minute show airing every Sunday at midnight, which was historically a dead time.[78][79]
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.[79][41][64] It was soon picked up by 90 stations across the United States, and it ran for a decade.[7][64] The show broke taboos of the time, about speaking publicly and explicitly about sex.[80]The New York Times described it as one of the station's "oddest shows," and among its biggest draws.[81][60] A New York University professor of human sexuality made listening to her show a class assignment.[60] When the station offered a "Dr. Ruth T-shirt" ("Sex on Sunday? You Bet!"), it received 3,500 orders.[60][82]
By 1982, her show was WYNY's top-rated phone-in talk show.[83] Singer
Pattie Brooks recorded a song as an ode to her, "Dr. Ruth," with a trendy, dance-rock tinged, high pressure beat.[84][85][86]
By 1983 her show was the top-rated radio show in the area, in the country's largest radio market.[87] In 1984
NBC Radio began
syndicating the radio program nationwide—it is now heard in 93 markets.[47] She went on to produce her radio show until 1990.[88]
In 1984, Westheimer began hosting several television programs on the
Lifetime TV network, and one in syndication. Her first show was Good Sex! With Dr. Ruth Westheimer, airing for a half hour at 10 pm on weeknights. She would end each show by reminding her audience: "Have good sex!"[89]
The show was expanded in 1985 to a full hour, and its name was changed to The 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 2 million homes a week.[61][89][47][90] In April 1985 she appeared on the cover of People.[61] That year she also appeared as an actress in the French romantic comedy film Une Femme ou Deux (One Woman or Two), starring
Gérard Depardieu and
Sigourney Weaver, playing the part of a wealthy philanthropist.[91]
Dr. Ruth's Game of Good Sex was released in 1985.[92][93] A Baltimore distributor said: "I'm going to have to compare this to Trivial Pursuit. The orders overshadow anything we've had in our company's 100-year history."[82]Dr. Ruth's Computer Game of Good Sex was a hit, released in 1986 for the
Commodore 64,
DOS, and
Apple II.[94][95][96][97] In addition, she gave an interview in the
January 1986 issue of Playboy.
In 1987 she began a separate half-hour syndicated series on many broadcast stations called Ask Dr. Ruth, which was co-hosted by Larry Angelo. Westheimer's friend
Eleanor Bergstein, the writer of the 1987 romantic drama dance film Dirty Dancing, attempted to cast her to play Mrs. Schumacher in the film (with
Joel Grey as her husband).[98][99] However, Westheimer backed out when she learned the role involved her playing a thief.[100][101][60]
She appeared on a TV Guide cover
in 1988. Dr. Ruth returned to the Lifetime network in 1988 with The All New Dr. Ruth Show. That was followed in 1989 by two teen advice shows called What'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 series Tall Tales & Legends as the "Mysterious Stranger."
In 1993, Westheimer and Israeli TV host Arad Nir hosted a talk show in Hebrew titled Min Tochnit, on the newly opened
Israeli Channel 2. The show was similar to her US 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".[108] 1993 and 1994 saw the publication of "Dr. Ruth's Good Sex Night-to-Night Calendar."[109]
In 1994, she appeared in a computer game, an interactive CD-ROM adaptation of Dr. Ruth's Encyclopedia of Sex released for
Windows and the Philips
CD-i.[110][111][112]
In 1995 she hosted a series of Playboy instructional videos entitled "Making Love." She also wrote a column distributed both nationally and internationally by the
King Features Syndicate.[3][58] In 1996, she co-authored Heavenly Sex, on Judaism and sex, in which she wrote: "The great rabbi
Simeon ben-Halafta called the penis the great peacemaker of the home."[3] She refers to the
Book of Ruth as encouraging single women to initiate sex (providing the relationship leads to marriage), cites a
Talmudic mandate that an unemployed man must make love to his wife every day, and mentions the writings of a 12th-century rabbi who suggested that couples use different positions while having sex.[3]
In 2000 she appeared on Grammy Award winner
Tom Chapin's album This Pretty Planet, in the song "Two Kinds of Seagulls", in which she and Chapin sing in a duet of various animals that reproduce sexually.[124] "It takes two to tingle" says the song.[125] That year, she also made a TV commercial for
Entenmann's Raspberry Danish Twist.[126]
Between 2001 and 2007, Westheimer made regular appearances on the
PBS children's television series Between the Lions as "Dr. Ruth Wordheimer" in a spoof of her therapist role, in which she helps anxious readers and spellers overcome their fear of
long words. In 2002, she received a nomination for a
Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album for Children, for Timeless Tales and Music of Our Time.[127] In 2003–04, she made 10 appearances as a panelist on the game show Hollywood Squares.
Speaking of
the 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."[11]
Westheimer is an accomplished
ethnographer. Her studies in this field include the
Ethiopian Jews,
Papua New Guinea's
Trobriand Islanders, and the
Druze, a sect originating from
Shia Islam now residing in Israel, Syria, and Lebanon. The latter were the subject of her 2007
PBS documentary The Olive and the Tree: The Secret Strength of the Druze, and a book of the same title.[141][142] She was also the Executive Producer for PBS documentaries Surviving Salvation and No Missing Link, Shifting Sands: Bedouin Women at the Crossroads, and The Unknown Face of Islam (on the
Circassians).[109]
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 in Becoming Dr. Ruth] had to take speech coaching to learn my accent! It's good to be Dr. Ruth!
In 2019, the documentary Ask Dr. Ruth directed by
Ryan White was in theaters, and was made available on
Hulu, as she approached her 90th birthday.[149][150] it won a
4th Critics' Choice Documentary Award in 2019 as "Most Compelling Living Subject of a Documentary," and was a
19th AARP Movies for Grownups Awards nominee in 2019 for "
Best Documentary."[151][152] 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.[153]
Westheimer has been married three times, the first two times briefly.[33][52] 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 fellow Holocaust survivor Manfred 'Fred' Westheimer, that was the "real marriage".[41][80][28] She met Fred on a
ski tow in
the Catskills.[3] Fred, too, had escaped
Nazi Germany.[164] When
Diane Sawyer, interviewing the couple for the TV show 60 Minutes asked her husband about their sex life, he answered, "The shoemaker's children have no shoes."[10] Their marriage lasted 36 years, until his death in 1997.[52]
She has two children, both of whom have doctorates, Miriam Yael Westheimer, who lived in Israel for six years and later married Joel Henry Einleger, and
Joel Westheimer, a professor at the
University of Ottawa, and four grandchildren.[52][3][23][28][59][165] She said: "I was so short – 4 feet 7 inches – that I couldn't believe that anything could grow inside of me."[166]
She speaks English, German, French, and
Hebrew.[2]
In December 2014, Westheimer was a guest at a wedding in
the Bronx. The groom, Rabbi Benjamin Goldschmidt, was the great-grandson of the woman who had helped rescue Westheimer from Nazi Germany.[167]
Among her concerns in the 21st century has been loneliness of people.[68] In 2023, Gov.
Kathy Hochul of New York appointed Westheimer as the inaugural "Loneliness Ambassador."
[3]
Westheimer still lives in the cluttered three-bedroom apartment on 190th Street "in Washington Heights where she raised her two children and became famous, in that order."[168][169] She has stayed there, she said in 1995, to be near the two
synagogues of which she is a member (one of which is the
Reform synagogue the
Hebrew Tabernacle Congregation of Washington Heights, and the other of which is
Conservative Synagogue Adath Israel of Riverdale; she used to also be a member of the
Orthodox synagogue Ohav Shalom until it closed), the
YMHA of Washington Heights and
Inwood of which she was president for 11 years, and a "still sizable community of German Jewish World War II refugees."[52][154][42][170][171][3] She explained: "Because of my experience with the Holocaust, I don't like to lose friends."[3]
Awards
In 2023, Westheimer received the
Women's Entrepreneurship Day Psychology Pioneer Award[172] at the
United Nations in recognition as a trailblazer and innovators in their field and who inspire all around them to use their lives to make a meaningful impact on the world.
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. (2000). The Art of Arousal: A Celebration of Erotic Art Throughout History. Lanham, Maryland: Madison Books.
ISBN978-1-56833-167-6.
Westheimer, Ruth K. (2000). Dr. Ruth's Guide to College Life: The Savvy Student's Handbook. Lanham, Maryland: Madison Books.
ISBN978-1-56833-171-3.
Westheimer, Ruth K. (2000). Encyclopedia of Sex (2nd ed.). New York: Bloomsbury Academic.
ISBN978-0-8264-1240-9.
Westheimer, Ruth K. (2000). Sex For Dummies (Miniature Editions for Dummies). Philadelphia: Running Press.
ISBN978-0-7624-0750-7.
Westheimer, Ruth K. (2001). All in a Lifetime: An Autobiography. New York: Grand Central Publishing.
ISBN978-0-446-67761-5.
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.
Filmography
Electric Dreams (1984); science fiction romantic comedy; cast as herself as talk show host
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