A Two-Way Conversation with Dr. Ruth Westheimer, When Sex meets Sex: An Insightful View on Sex, Jewish Spirituality, and Sex Education
I will never forget the afternoon I spent, about 30 years ago, with Dr. Ruth Westheimer, interviewing her for a now-long-lost magazine article — my first ever. We met at the door of her New York City office in Washington Heights. She mingled her pocketbook into my hands, as she fished for her keys. Once inside the cozy, cluttered space, I saw the many footstools she kept stowed beneath every chair. She used to use them to keep her feet from dangling when she sat down.
We were there to talk about a book she had written about sex and Jewish spirituality, but she turned it into a two-way conversation, quizzing me about my studies, my new job, my love life. She began trying to fix things after she heard what she had been told. She wondered if she could arrange job interviews for me and find suitable young men to join B’nai Jeshurun, on the Upper West Side. She was personal, concerned, connected, and she encouraged me to connect more with others. She had a special talent for fostering connection.
Dr. Ruth’s office testified to her own engaged and connected life. The many photographs lining the walls and crowding the tabletops showed her posing with family members as well as with numerous celebrities and dignitaries. She smiled through goggles while on various international mountaintops. It was found out that Dr. Ruth was an avid skier, a fact that should have no surprise to me. She just didn’t seem the type. And that was always the point.
Westheimer’s giggly, German-accented voice, coupled with her 4-foot-7 frame, made her an unlikely looking — and sounding — outlet for “sexual literacy.” The contradiction was one of the keys to her success.
She was a teacher at Lehman College after getting her doctorate from Columbia University. While there she developed a specialty — instructing professors how to teach sex education. It became the core of her curriculum eventually.
Her radio success opened new doors, and in 1983 she wrote the first of more than 40 books: “Dr. Ruth’s Guide to Good Sex,” demystifying sex with both rationality and humor. There was even a board game, Dr. Ruth’s Game of Good Sex.
Dr. Ruth Westheimer, who encouraged America to talk about sex, dies at 96: A memoir of a good woman, whose sexual advice was really good
Westheimer made appearances on “The Howard Stern Radio Show,” “Nightline,” “The Tonight Show,” “The Ellen DeGeneres Show,” “The Dr. Oz Show” and “Late Night with David Letterman.” She played herself in episodes of “Quantum Leap” and “Love Boat: The Next Wave.”
In 1982, O’Brien wrote that it was pure hedonism. “’The message is just indulge yourself; whatever feels good is good. There is no higher law of overriding morality, and there’s also no responsibility.”
Father O’Brien became a cardinal because of her work as the director of communications for the New York archdiocese.
In 1999, a woman who wanted to be an anti-feminist wrote a piece called “The Dangers of Sex Education.” She said that Gloria Steinem, Madonna, Ellen DeGeneres, and others were promoting “provocative sex chatter” and “rampant immorality.”
Her rise was noteworthy for the culture of the time, in which then-President Ronald Reagan’s administration was hostile to Planned Parenthood and aligned with pro-conservative voices.
In 1984, her radio program was nationally syndicated. A year later, she debuted in her own television program, “The Dr. Ruth Show,” which went on to win an Ace Award for excellence in cable television.
It was there that she had discovered her calling. As she once said in a typically folksy comment, she was giving sexual advice like good chicken soup.
Source: Dr. Ruth Westheimer, who encouraged America to talk about sex, dies at 96
The First 20 Years: When Manfred Westheimer and She Become a Families: An Israeli Refugee’s Journey to the West End
In 1961, after a second divorce, she finally met her life partner: Manfred Westheimer, a fellow refugee from Nazi Germany. The couple had a child, a son. They remained wed for 36 years until “Fred” — as she called him — died of heart failure in 1997.
She married her first husband, an Israeli soldier, in 1950, and they moved to Paris as she pursued an education. The Sorbonne accepted Westheimer after he passed an entrance exam and was a high school graduate.
Her legs were so badly wounded when the bomb exploded that she had to have it removed. She said it was only through the work of a “superb” surgeon that she could walk and ski again.
At the age of 16, she moved to Palestine and joined the Haganah, the underground movement for Israeli independence. She said she never shot at anyone.
She was only a child when she was born. At 10, she was sent by her parents to Switzerland to escape Kristallnacht — the Nazis’ 1938 pogrom that served as a precursor to the Holocaust. She never saw her parents again; Westheimer believed they were killed in the gas chambers at Auschwitz.
In the 1980s, she stood up for gay men at the height of the AIDS epidemic and spoke out loudly for the LGBTQ community. She said she defended people deemed by some far-right Christians to be “subhuman” because of her own past.
Ryan White, the director of “Ask Dr Ruth,” told Vice in 2019 that Westheimer was never someone following trends. She was an ardent supporter of family planning and gay rights.
She used words like masturbation and vagina on radio and TV in order to get people to use them. She was included in People magazine’s list of The Most Intriguing People of the Century. She wrote a song that said she wouldn’t need proof to show her the truth.
She told the students in 2002 that she is a bit of a square. Sex is not a public art nor a private matter. It is something we have to talk about.
She soon became a regular on the late-night television talk-show circuit, bringing her personality to the national stage. Her rise coincided with the early days of the AIDS epidemic, when frank sexual talk became a necessity.
Source: Dr. Ruth Westheimer, who encouraged America to talk about sex, dies at 96
On Dr. Westheimer, a Jewish Priest, who doesn’t have sex for one week, and the determination of her doctorate
“Tell him you’re not going to initiate,” she told a concerned caller in June 1982. “Tell him that Dr. Westheimer said that you’re not going to die if he doesn’t have sex for one week.”
Westheimer received an honorary doctorate from Hebrew Union College-Institute of Religion for her work in human sexuality and her commitment to the Jewish people, Israel and religion. In 2001 she received the Ellis Island Medal of Honor and the Leo Baeck Medal, and in 2004, she received the degree of Doctor of Letters, honoris causa, from Trinity College.