Ruth Westheimer

Ruth Westheimer, better known as Dr. Ruth, was an American sex therapist, media personality, and author who was a pioneer in spreading “sexual literacy.” The New York Times described her as a “Sorbonne-trained psychologist who became a kind of cultural icon in the 1980s... She ushered in the new age of freer, franker talk about sex on radio and television—and was endlessly parodied for her limitless enthusiasm and for having an accent only a psychologist could have.”

Westheimer was born Karola Ruth Siegel in 1928 in Wiesenfeld (near Karlstadt am Main), Germany, the only child of Orthodox Jews Irma (née Hanauer) and Julius Siegel. In January 1939, at the age of 10, she was sent to Switzerland by her mother and grandmother as part of the Kindertransport after the Nazis had taken her father. Her haven, along with that of some 100 other German-Jewish children, was made possible by Swiss activist Franzisca Goldschmidt. In Switzerland, young Karola came of age in an orphanage and stopped receiving her parents’ letters in September 1941. In 1945, Westheimer learned that her parents had been killed in the Holocaust, possibly at Auschwitz.

Following World War II, Westheimer, then 16, immigrated to British-controlled Mandatory Palestine and joined the Haganah in Jerusalem. Because of her diminutive height of 4 ft 7 in (1.40 m), she was trained as a scout and sniper. An exploding shell seriously wounded Westheimer in action during the War of Independence, and it was several months before she was able to walk again.

In 1950, Westheimer moved to France, where she studied and then taught psychology at the University of Paris. She was fluent in English, German, French, and Hebrew.

In 1956, she immigrated to the United States and settled in Washington Heights, Manhattan. She lived in a “cluttered three-bedroom apartment in Washington Heights, where she raised her two children and became famous, in that order.”

Westheimer earned an M.A. degree in sociology from The New School in 1959 and an Ed.D. degree from Teachers College, Columbia University in 1970. She completed post-doctoral work in human sexuality at New York-Presbyterian Hospital, training with pioneer sex therapist Helen Singer Kaplan. She wrote several books on human sexuality, including Dr. Ruth’s Encyclopedia of Sex and Sex for Dummies. The full version of Dr. Ruth’s Encyclopedia of Sex is available online.

Westheimer was invited to give commencement speeches at several universities. She also taught courses and seminars at Princeton and Yale and was the guest speaker at the Bronx High School of Science in New York, commemorating Yom HaShoah in 2008. Westheimer spoke about her life story, and 500 people sang “Happy Birthday” in honor of her 80th birthday. She received an honorary Bronx High School of Science diploma at the ceremony. In 2008, she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by Westfield State College.

Media Career

In 1980, WYNY-FM was NBC Radio’s New York City-owned-and-operated station. The struggling Adult Contemporary station went through a makeover to build an audience. This rebuild included adding specialized talk shows to the evening and weekend hours. Maurice Tunick was recruited from New York’s leading talk station, WOR, where he was a talk show producer. As WYNY’s Program Coordinator, he was responsible for developing new talk shows.

Betty Elam was WYNY’s Community Affairs Manager. She worked closely with community groups and the station’s public affairs programming. After attending a New York Market Radio (NYMRAD) convention at which Westheimer spoke, she was taken with Westheimer’s passion, information, sense of humor, and personality and suggested that WYNY do something with her. She made two appearances as a guest on a taped Sunday morning public affairs program. WYNY’s General Manager, Dan Griffin, then suggested that Tunick find a way to develop a public affairs show for her.

The show, Sexually Speaking, using the name “Dr. Ruth,” was taped in an NBC Radio studio at 30 Rockefeller Center, NBC’s radio and TV headquarters, on Thursday mornings at 11:00 a.m. for airing on Sunday nights at midnight. As “Dr. Ruth,” Westheimer became nationally known after several appearances on Late Night with David Letterman in the early 1980s. In less than two years, Dr. Ruth became a household name and was heard on radio stations nationwide. Her pioneering TV show, also called Sexually Speaking, first aired in 1982 as a 15-minute taped show on Lifetime Cable. It grew in popularity and was nationally syndicated like her radio program. During this era, she also frequently appeared on the syndicated revival of Hollywood Squares from 1986 to 1989.

In 1993, Westheimer (alongside the Israeli TV host Arad Nir) hosted a talk show in Hebrew, Min Tochnit, on the newly opened Israeli Channel 2. The show was similar to her U.S. Sexually Speaking show. The name of the show was a play on words: literally “Kind of a program,” but “Min” (מין) in Hebrew also means “sex” and “gender.”

Legacy

In the January 2009 55^th anniversary issue of Playboy, Westheimer was listed as #13 on the list of the 55 most influential people in sex from the past 55 years.

In October 2013, the play “Becoming Dr. Ruth” opened off-Broadway. Actress Debra Jo Rupp played the role of Dr. Ruth. The play showcased the sex therapist’s life from fleeing the Nazis and joining the Haganah to her struggles to succeed as a single mother coming to America. She was also the subject of the documentary Ask Dr. Ruth. She 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 was the author of 45 books on sex and sexuality.

In December 2014, Westheimer was a guest at an Orthodox Jewish wedding in the Bronx, NY. The groom, Rabbi Benjamin Goldschmidt, is the great-grandson of the woman who had helped rescue Westheimer from Nazi Germany.

She was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame and awarded the Magnus Hirschfeld Medal, the Ellis Island Medal of Honor, the Leo Baeck Medal, the Planned Parenthood Margaret Sanger Award, and the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.

Westheimer was married three times. She said each marriage played an important role in her relationship advice. After two divorces, it was her third marriage, at age 32, to fellow Holocaust survivor Manfred Westheimer, that she considered her “real marriage.” That relationship lasted until his death in 1997. She had two children, Miriam and Joel, and several grandchildren.

Westheimer died at her home in Manhattan on July 12, 2024, at the age of 96.

Sources: Wikipedia.
Women's International Center.

Photo: Wikimedia, By Carl_Clifford_and_Ruth_Westheimer.jpg: Cliff from Arlington, Virginia, USA derivative work: GrapedApe (Carl_Clifford_and_Ruth_Westheimer.jpg) [CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons].