Farewelling advice guru Doctor Ruth
The German-born Holocaust orphan and Haganah fighter later moved to the US, obtaining a doctorate in family studies.
The passing last Friday of Dr Ruth Westheimer at the age of 96 brought back warm memories of the three times I had the privilege to speak with the pint-sized matron who happened to be America’s foremost celebrity sex guru.
The German-born Holocaust orphan and Haganah fighter later moved to the US, obtaining a doctorate in family studies. She became known as “Dr Ruth”, an acclaimed expert on sex-related issues and a pop icon.
Westheimer visited Australia in 1989 to promote her book Doctor Ruth’s Guide to Good Sex, and I was assigned to interview her for The AJN.
Our meeting took place over coffee and pastries in the dining room of Melbourne’s Hotel Windsor – and in her signature accent, half Berlin, half Manhattan, delivered at rousing volume – she remarked on how Melbourne’s Danishes are actually better than New York’s, before seamlessly launching into a frank analysis of orgasms.
I remember nervously glancing around the dining room and wondering whether others were eavesdropping on a young man and a 60-year-old lady discussing sexual arousal.
“There’s no question that for us Jews, sex has never been a sin, not like some other religions – that has no doubt helped me to speak so explicitly,” she told me, noting that her books on sex always begin with Talmudic quotations, on topics such as the role of sex in “Shalom bayit [happy households].”
Years later, in 2021, aged 93, Westheimer was the guest of the UIA Women’s Division, set to appear by live video from New York. I had the opportunity to conduct a Zoom interview with her in the days before the event. It was a happy reunion, me in my pandemic lockdown study in Melbourne, she in her New York apartment.
She said she was “jumping for joy” at her scholarship endowment at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, which would be awarded to Israeli psychology students.
And she was excited about an upcoming stage show Becoming Dr Ruth, in which she was to be played by actress Tovah Feldshuh – based on a 2019 documentary Ask Dr Ruth.
At the UIA event, held before a packed auditorium at Classic Cinemas, I had a chance to prompt her a third time. My question was what she thought about sexual relations in the #MeToo era.
“One of the reasons people still talk to me at the age of 93 is because I’m very honest. I have no answer,” she responded. But she urged sexual partners to always keep their “sechel [commonsense]”.
Born Karola Ruth Siegel in Germany, she was taken to a Swiss orphanage – never again to see her parents, who died in the Holocaust.
In mandated Palestine, as a Haganah sniper, she was severely wounded but survived because she’d run to fetch a book just before her shelter was bombed.
After teaching kindergarten in France, she settled in New York, studying sociology on a Nazi victims’ scholarship, and worked in Planned Parenthood. Assisting Jewish sexologist Helen Singer-Kaplan, she later earned a Masters and a Doctorate in sociology.
Westheimer impressed broadcasters in a lecture about sex advice in the media, and was soon offered a radio advice program.
Rocketing to TV fame as “Dr Ruth”, she openly discussed subjects including contraception and AIDS.
She appeared in numerous movies and TV shows, including a “Dr Ruth” cameo in the 1984 romcom Electric Dreams.
In our 1989 interview, she urged, “Please tell your readers that basically, I’m old fashioned. I’m a square.”
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