The Indomitable Dr. Ruth

“Dr. Ruth” Westheimer, the Jewish woman who helped countless of people in their intimate lives, has died at the age of 96. In over 40 books, on television, and through her popular syndicated radio show, Dr. Ruth educated millions of people, providing accurate, clear information about sexuality at a time when the topic was taboo. Dr. Ruth reassured people that sex was a normal part of life.

Few of her many fans realized that Dr. Ruth – a diminutive, motherly figure with a thick German accent – was a decorated military hero in Israel, and that her life was marked both by the Holocaust and by her intense devotion to Jewish life.

Orthodox Jewish Childhood

Dr. Ruth’s parents met in a way that is fittingly romantic for their daughter’s later career in romance: her mother Irma took a job as a housekeeper for the Seigel family in the German town of Weisenfeld. She and Julius Seigel, her employer’s son, fell in love, married, and moved to Frankfurt, where Dr. Ruth was born in 1928. Irma and Julius were Orthodox Jews, and raised their daughter – named Karola Ruth Siegel – in a warm Jewish home. She was their only child, and later fondly recalled going to synagogue regularly with her father.

Upheaval During the Holocaust

The last time Dr. Ruth saw her beloved father she was ten years old, during Kristallnacht, the “Night of Broken Glass,” November 9-10, 1938. Nazi members and ordinary citizens took to the streets in towns throughout Germany, Austria, and in parts of Czechoslovakia. Over 1,500 synagogues were destroyed; 7,500 Jewish-owned businesses were burned down and ransacked; hundreds of Jews were beaten, raped, and murdered. Over 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and sent to concentration camps. Among them was Julius Segal, Dr. Ruth’s father. She later recalled watching as he was bundled away outside their apartment window.

Dr. Ruth and her parents

Her mother and grandmother realized that no Jew was safe in Germany and secured a place for young Ruth in a group of 300 Jewish children who were being sent to Switzerland as part of a Kindertransport. The Kindertransport missions brought about 10,000 Jewish children to safety in countries including Britain, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. These children were saved, but at the cost of losing their families: no adults were allowed on the transports. Dr. Ruth never saw her family again. After the war, she believed her parents were both murdered in Auschwitz.

In Switzerland, Dr. Ruth lived in an orphanage. She later recalled that she and the other Jewish children were treated badly, forced to do housework and take care of the younger children. Girls were not allowed to attend regular high school. By day, Dr. Ruth learned how to do housework in an all-girls school. At night, she would steal her way to one of the orphanage’s stairwells where the lights remained on and study from the books of a Jewish orphan who would share his textbooks with her.

Heroism in Israel

After the Holocaust, at the age of 16, Dr. Ruth – along with her friend from the orphanage – moved to British-ruled Mandatory Palestine, in present-day Israel. She began going by her middle name, Ruth, and lived in various kibbutzim, or collective farms.

I learned to assemble a rifle in the dark and was trained as a sniper so that I could hit the center of the target time after time.

At that time, the Jewish community in Mandatory Palestine was besieged: beset by violent attacks from hostile Arab forces, and forbidden by the British from accepting the tens of thousands of ragged Holocaust survivors who were begging to move to the Holy Land. Dr. Ruth later described how she joined the precursor to the modern day IDF (Israeli Army): “At the age of 16 I immigrated to Palestine from Europe, where I became a member of the Haganah, the main underground army of the Jews. I learned to assemble a rifle in the dark and was trained as a sniper so that I could hit the center of the target time after time. As it happened, I never did get into actual combat, but that didn’t prevent my being severely wounded. I almost lost both my feet as a result of a bombing attack on Jerusalem” on her 20th birthday.

Dr Ruth in Israel

In the same article, Dr. Ruth also explained why she felt, as a female Jewish combat veteran, that it is so important for all Jews to defend the Jewish state: “Now were it up to me, I would abolish all warfare. But having lost my family at the hands of the Nazis, I know that we need our armed forces in order to protect our freedoms. And there is no reason why our troops have to be composed only of one sex.”

Finding Love and Building a Career

Dr. Ruth married three times; she later said “the third one was the real marriage,” lasting from 1961 to her husband Fred Westheimer’s death in 1997. After teaching kindergarten for a time in Israel, Dr. Ruth moved with her first husband to Paris, where she earned a degree in Psychology at the prestigious Sorbonne university. She later moved to the United States and in 1970 received a Doctorate in Education from Columbia University.

She worked in a variety of jobs related to public health and trained as a sex therapist, working part time while her children were in school. Her career took off seemingly overnight in 1980, after she agreed to host a 15-minute show that aired at midnight on a New York radio station. Her short show was called “Sexually Speaking,” and her amusing, fact-based, and direct style of conveying information quickly gained listeners. The New York Times noted in 1984 that her show boosted her “from obscurity to almost instant stardom.” The radio station quickly expanded her show first to a one-hour long slot, then to two hours, capitalizing on their new star’s ever-expanding popularity.

In 1984 Dr. Ruth began hosting her own television show in the US. In the 1990s she appeared on a similar program about sexuality and sexual health in Israel. She provided lucid, accurate answers to listeners’ and viewers’ questions, and helped remove many of the taboos against discussing sexual health. Dr. Ruth was warm and relatable, and was funny while treating questions about sexuality with the respect they deserved. She used to teach her audiences that sex was a healthy part of life; sometimes she explained that the goal of a loving, respectful relationship was “shalom bayit,” a Hebrew expression meaning peace in the home.

New York’s Loneliness Ambassador

Dr. Ruth worked until her final months. Observing the rise in loneliness in recent years, she lobbied the state of New York to create a role for her to help her fellow citizens. Dr. Ruth’s tenacity paid off: At the end of 2023, New York Governor Kathy Hochul appointed Dr. Ruth as New York State’s – and the USA’s first – “Loneliness Ambassador,” charging her with helping combat the growing scourge of loneliness. Dr. Ruth told The New York Times “The first thing to do is have the courage to admit you’re lonely. Then you can do something about it.”

The Nazis couldn’t eradicate my will to live and pass on to my children and grandchildren my love for Judaism, Israel, and the Jewish people.

She opened up about her own experiences with loneliness: “I’ve known loneliness, even extreme loneliness, during my 95 years. When I was ten years old, I was separated from my family and never saw them again. When I was twenty, I was caught in a bomb blast and almost died and wondered what would happen to me. Also, I lost my husband of 35 years to a stroke in 1997. And I’ve been lonely at other times too. So, when I read about the loneliness epidemic, given my history and my experiences as a therapist, I knew I had to join the fight against loneliness.” She encouraged people to go out when possible and to forge connections with others. Sadly, Dr. Ruth suffered a stroke soon after being appointed Loneliness Ambassador and had to curtail much of her public work.

“Am Yisrael Chai”

Despite the fame and wealth her career brought her, Dr. Ruth always lived in the same three-bedroom apartment in Washington Heights, an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood of New York where she’d raised her family. She attended several synagogues regularly, and was active in a range of Jewish causes. A patron of The Museum of Jewish Heritage - A Living Memorial to the Holocaust in New York City, Dr. Ruth urged people to visit the institution, explaining “It’s like a grave for my family who don’t have graves.” In 2021, she established the Dr. Ruth Westheimer Scholarship in Psychology at Ben-Gurion University in Israel.

She enjoyed a busy social life. On Shabbat, she often visited friends. She was fond of quoting the end of the poem Aishet Chayil, A Woman of Valor, which is traditionally sung on Friday evenings before Shabbat dinner. She believed the song’s line “many women have excelled, but you outshine them all” is the most romantic in all of literature. This is how all men ought to regard their wives, she would tell guests at Shabbat dinners.

Dr. Ruth often spoke of her grandchildren, Ari and Leora, and how they are living proof that the Nazis failed to wipe out the Jewish people. “When I look at my Ari and Leora,” Dr. Ruth wrote, “I know that the Nazis weren't able to accomplish their supreme goal. Yes, they destroyed my family, including my beloved parents and grandparents, but they couldn’t eradicate my will to live and pass on to my children and grandchildren my love for Judaism, Israel, and the Jewish people. For me, the phrase ‘Am Yisrael Chai’ - ‘The Jewish people lives’ - holds special meaning.”

 

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