Ruth Westheimer

Westheimer in May 2008, at New York City's Apollo Theater in Harlem for a Miri Ben-Ari concert marking the 60th Anniversary of Israel.

Ruth Westheimer (born June 4, 1928) is a sex therapist and author. Best known as Dr. Ruth, the New York Times described her as "a cultural icon in the 1980s. The Sister Wendy of sexuality, 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."

Biography

Westheimer was born as Karola Ruth Siegel in Frankfurt, Germany, the only child of an Orthodox Jewish couple. In 1939 she was sent to Switzerland by her mother and grandmother after her father was taken by the Nazis. There she came of age in an orphanage, and stopped receiving her parent's letters in September 1941. In 1945, Westheimer learned that her parents had been killed in the Holocaust, possibly at the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Westheimer decided to immigrate to the British Mandate of Palestine. There, at 17, she "first had sexual intercourse on a starry night, in a haystack—without contraception." 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." Westheimer joined the Haganah in Jerusalem. Despite her diminutive height (4'7"), she was trained as a scout and sharpshooter. Westheimer was seriously wounded in action by an exploding shell during the Israeli War of Independence in 1948, 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. In 1956, she immigrated to the United States, settling in Washington Heights, Manhattan. She still lives in the "cluttered three-bedroom apartment in Washington Heights where she raised her two children and became famous, in that order," because the two synagogues she belongs to, the YMHA she was president of for three years, and a "still sizable community of German Jewish World War II refugees" remain in the neighborhood.

She earned a master's degree in sociology from Columbia University and an Ed.D. from Teachers College, Columbia University. She completed post-doctoral work in human sexuality at New York-Presbyterian Hospital. She is multilingual, speaking English, German, French, and Hebrew.

Westheimer has written several books on human sexuality, including Dr. Ruth's Encyclopedia of Sex and Sex for Dummies.

Westheimer has given commencement speeches at the Hebrew Union College seminary, Lehman College of the City University of New York, and, in 2004, at Trinity College (an Episcopalian institution, although Westheimer is associated with Judaism). She has also taught courses and seminars at Princeton and Yale.

Westheimer was the guest speaker at the Bronx High School of Science in New York in commemoration of Yom HaShoah 2008. She spoke about her life story and the audience of 500 sang "Happy Birthday" in honor of her 80th birthday.

Westheimer has been married three times. Her third marriage, to Manfred Westheimer, lasted until his death in 1997. She has two children, Miriam and Joel, and several grandchildren.

Media career

Dr. Ruth speaking on October 4, 2007 at Brown University

In 1980 WYNY-FM was NBC Radio's New York City owned-and-operated station. The struggling Adult Contemporary station had recently gone through a makeover in an attempt to build an audience. Part of this rebuild was 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 talk show producer. As WYNY's Program Coordinator he was responsible for developing new talk shows.

Betty Elam was WYNY's Community Affairs Manager. Her job was to work closely with community groups and the station's public affairs programming. Betty was one of dozens of radio station Community Affairs managers attending the NYMRAD ascertainment day which had Westheimer as a speaker, and came back raving about her.

Betty was taken in by Westheimer's passion, information, sense of humor and personality and suggested that WYNY ought to do something with her. She was invited to be a guest on a taped Sunday morning public affairs program twice. Following that, WYNY's General Manager, Dan Griffin suggested Maurice find a way to develop a public affairs show for her.

Maurice was given Sunday night at midnight for 15 minutes. Being a novice in radio, Westheimer thought it would be a good idea to have guests covering urology, neurology, gynecology, etc. — all areas which could have an effect on sex. While that would be important, Tunick thought a better show would be to not have guests at all but to directly answer listeners' questions. NBC was reluctant to allow live phone calls for a sex advice show, which was considered very risqué in the early 1980s, but Tunick suggested soliciting questions via mail. By people submitting their questions, Westheimer could control the questions and read them on the air with her answers. Typically each question could begin with, "I have a letter from a listener who asks..."

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. All NBC studios at 30 Rock were accessible from other studios and many offices around the building. A couple of weeks into recording, it was reported that work was stopping in many places in the building on Thursdays at 11 as people were gathering to hear this "cross between Henry Kissinger and Minnie Mouse," as the Wall Street Journal would later describe her.

After just two months, despite the initial concerns over a live show, it was decided that Westheimer could go live for an hour taking phone calls (with a delay). Within a year "Dr. Ruth" had a larger audience on Sunday night at midnight on this struggling New York station than many NY stations had in morning drive.

As "Dr. Ruth", Westheimer became nationally known after several appearances on "Late Night with David Letterman" in the early 1980's. In less than two years, Dr. Ruth became a household name and was being heard on radio stations across the country.

Her pioneering TV show, also called Sexually Speaking, first aired in 1982 as a 15-minute taped show on Lifetime Cable. It has since increased in popularity and has been nationally syndicated, as has her radio show. She is known to be candid and funny, but respectful.

In recent years, Westheimer has made regular appearances on the PBS Television children's show Between the Lions as "Dr. Ruth Wordheimer" in a parody of her therapist role, in which she helps anxious readers and spellers overcome their fear of long words.

External links

• Dr. Ruth Westheimer at IMDb
• German American Heritage Biography
• Ruth Westheimers's Motivational Commencement Speech