Ruth Westheimer, recognized authority on sex, dies at age 96: Media

Ruth Westheimer, the highly successful sex therapist who became a pop culture phenomenon in the 1980s with her blunt advice on how to spice up your life in the bedroom, has died, US media reported on Saturday. She was 96 years old.

People magazine quoted her publicist and sometime co-writer Pierre Lehu as saying she died Friday. The cause of death was not given, but other reports said she died at home in New York City with her family by her side.

Born in Germany, Westheimer, who lost both her parents in the Holocaust, only rose to fame in her fifties when she began hosting a groundbreaking radio show in New York City called “Sexually Speaking.”

Under the simple name Dr. Ruth, she capitalized on her fame later in life, hosting a television show, appearing in numerous films, and advising millions of fans in some 40 books on how to have more satisfying sex lives.

Westheimer’s small stature—she was only 4 feet 7 inches tall—her matronly appearance, and her cheerful disposition made her a trustworthy interlocutor for frank discussions about intimacy.

Her life includes many chapters, including a harrowing escape as a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany, a stint as a sniper in the Israeli army, and another as a housekeeper in New York City before earning her doctorate at Columbia University and beginning a life as a sex therapist.

She remained active into her 90s and explained to People magazine in 2023 how she stayed youthful and relevant: “Talking about sex from morning to night! It keeps you young.”

– From sniper to sex therapist –

Karola Ruth Siegel was born on June 4, 1928, as the only child of Orthodox Jewish parents in Wiesenfeld, Germany.

When she was ten years old, the Nazis took her father to a concentration camp shortly after the anti-Jewish Kristallnacht pogrom. As the drums of war grew louder, her mother and grandmother put her on a train that took her to an orphanage in Switzerland. She never saw her parents again.

After the war, she emigrated to Palestine, which was then controlled by Britain, and joined a Zionist underground group that was training for military operations. During the war, which ended with Israel’s independence, she was seriously injured in an explosion.

In 1950, she moved to Paris with her new husband, an Israeli soldier, where she studied at the Sorbonne. Freshly divorced, she emigrated to New York City and began raising a daughter, Miriam, from a brief second marriage.

In her third marriage, in 1961, she married Manfred Westheimer, also a Jewish refugee and Holocaust survivor. The marriage lasted until his death in 1997. The couple had a son, Joel.

After graduating, Westheimer worked with pioneering sex therapist Helen Singer Kaplan before launching her New York radio show in 1980.

In less than two years, she became a household name with her national radio and television shows.

The small Jewish bundle of energy – who spoke candidly about the female orgasm, masturbation, homosexuality, consent and other bedroom topics – reached a nation craving blunt answers.

Her nonjudgmental manner put people at ease, and her advice was often succinct and direct: have sex before dinner, enjoy and share fantasies, and be flexible toward partners with different sexual appetites.

She avoided the word “normal” and said that anything that happened between two consenting adults in private was fine. She also supported the legalization of prostitution, which sparked some controversy.

Her book “Sex for Dummies” has been published in 17 languages.

– “Very good shooter” –

In the wake of the #MeToo movement, some were angered by Westheimer’s stance on the issue of consent.

“The idea that if you’re aroused and you’ve already started, you should then ask, ‘Can I touch your left breast or your right breast?’ is just nonsense,” she told The Guardian in 2019.

Westheimer adored her children and grandchildren and told them about her complicated past, including her time as a sniper in the fight for Israel’s independence.

“I was a very good shot. I once went with my grandson to a fair where you shoot the clown in the mouth with a water gun. We came home with 12 stuffed animals and a goldfish,” she said.

In 2009, Playboy magazine ranked her 13th on its list of the 55 most important people in sex of the last 55 years.

A one-woman play about Westheimer’s life, “Becoming Dr. Ruth,” ran off-Broadway in 2013, and the documentary “Ask Dr. Ruth” was released in 2019.

She appeared regularly on television shows, including “Ally McBeal” and “Melrose Place,” and made cameo appearances in numerous films.

Westheimer always expressed her gratitude for surviving the Holocaust and felt it was her duty to give something in return.

“I didn’t know that my ultimate contribution to the world would be to talk about orgasms and erections, but I knew I had to do something for others to justify my life,” she told the Harvard Business Review in 2016.

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