On July 12, 2023, ‘Dr. Ruth” died at age 96 of complications from a stroke that she first suffered a year before. She was a sex therapist and talk show host who at age 52 in 1980 started her radio show, “Sexually Speaking”, on WYNY-FM in New York City. The show became so popular that at age 56, she hosted several television programs on the Lifetime TV network such as “Good Sex! With Dr. Ruth Westheimer.”
Her story is incredible because her early life was stacked against her succeeding in any way. She was born in Germany to a Jewish family before the holocaust. At age 10, she was sent by her parents to Switzerland in one of the “Kindertransport” orphanages that tried to protect the children in Jewish families from the Nazis. Her parents and grandparents were all put in concentration camps and killed.
Education and Career
At age 17, after World War II ended, she emigrated to British-controlled Palestine. Primarily because she was only 4 feet, 7 inches tall, she became a sniper in the Jewish “Haganah.” Her small size made her a more difficult target for other snipers and she was gifted as an exceptionally accurate shooter. She learned to assemble a rifle in the dark, and when she was 90 years old, she demonstrated that she was still able to put together a Sten gun with her eyes closed.
At age 20, during the 1947 Israeli War of Independence, she was injured by an exploding shell and almost lost both feet. She went to Paris to study psychology at the Sorbonne, and at age 27, she came to the United States and supported herself by working as a maid while she earned a Master of Arts in sociology from the New School. At age 42, she received her doctor’s degree from Teachers College at Columbia University. After that, she taught students at Lehman College in the Bronx and instructed professors on how to teach sex education. She then went on to support herself by teaching at several universities and opening her own sex therapy practice.
In 1980, She started her incredible media career and the rest is history. Her radio show, “Sexually Speaking,” was the top-rated radio show in the country’s largest radio market. When she went on to do a television show, “The Dr. Ruth Show” reached two million viewers a week. She hosted several series on the Lifetime Channel, co-starred in a movie with Gérard Depardieu, and wrote 45 books. She spoke four languages fluently (English, German, French, and Hebrew).
She was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in 2019. Her many awards and honorary degrees included 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.
Her Views On Sex
- She emphasized that sex is nothing to be ashamed of and she never recommended risky sexual behavior
- She said that it is far more important to have a loving relationship than just marriage or casual sex
- She defended abortion rights
- She suggested that older people have sex after a good night’s sleep
- She recommended the regular use of condoms
- She preached monogamy
- She supported people’s right to be part of the LGBTQ community
- She defined sexual liberation as being able to tell each other what they need to be satisfied
Personal Life
Dr. Ruth had her first boyfriend, Walter, when she was a teenager in an orphanage in Switzerland and maintained contact with him, personally and over the phone, for more than 80 years. After her recent death, he sent an email to a reporter stating that he felt very sad after he learned that she had died.
In 1950, at age 21, she married her first husband, an Israeli soldier. She said, “That marriage didn’t last because I was too young and I wanted to focus on my studies,” so she left him and moved to Paris to go to college. Although she was never graduated from high school, she got such high scores in the entrance examination that she was accepted by the Sorbonne to study psychology. In Paris, she met her second husband, who was French, and they moved to New York City. She became pregnant with her daughter, Miriam, but her marriage ended in 1955. In 1961, at age 33, she met Fred Westheimer on a ski trip. He was a 35 year-old German-Jewish head of the Jewish ski club and had never been married. He had also escaped from Nazi Germany. When Diane Sawyer, interviewing them for the TV show 60 Minutes, asked Dr. Ruth’s husband about their sex life, he answered, “The shoemaker’s children have no shoes.” The marriage lasted 36 years, until his death from heart failure in 1997.
An Inspiring Life
I highly recommend taking the time to read her lengthy Wikipedia biography. It tells the story of an incredible human being who rose from horrendous early life abuse by the Nazis to become a leading interpreter of rational sexual behavior when there was so much misinformation on the subject.
Ruth Westheimer (“Dr. Ruth”)
June 4, 1928 – July 12, 2024
