Ruth Westheimer, sex therapist known to millions as ‘Dr. Ruth,’ dies at 96

Ruth Westheimer, a child survivor of the Holocaust who became known to millions as Dr. Ruth, the perky sex therapist whose frankness on her long-running radio and television call-in shows made her a go-to guide for tips on the art and science of lovemaking, died July 12 at her home in Manhattan. She was 96.

Her death was confirmed by Pierre Lehu, a publicist and her co-author on several books, but no cause was noted.

Described as the first superstar sex therapist, Dr. Westheimer was old then 50 when she debuted in 1980 on New York’s WYNY with “Sexually Speaking.” The radio program initially aired in 15-minute installments and was later syndicated and extended to two hours to accommodate the onslaught of queries she received from callers. More than a few listeners professed that she had saved their marriages.

Cable television viewers knew her as the prim, matronly host in the 1980s of “Good Sex With Dr. Ruth Westheimer” and as a frequent guest on late-night talk shows. At 4-foot-7, she often was seen perched on a seat, bedecked in pearls, cheerfully dispensing advice on best practices in the sack.

“Have good sex!” she trilled in her instantly recognizable German-inflected voice.

Dr. Westheimer’s old-world accent, at times seemingly incongruous with her discussion of intimate anatomy and its usage, was one of the few traces of her life before she came to the United States. Born to an Orthodox Jewish family in Germany, she survived the Holocaust at a Swiss orphanage where her parents sent her before they perished.

“I was left with a feeling that because I was not killed by the Nazis – because I survived – I had an obligation to make a dent in the world,” Dr. Westheimer once told an interviewer. What she did not know, she added, was that the dent would entail her “talking about sex from morning to night.”

After the war, she went to Israel, where she joined the Haganah paramilitary group fighting for Jewish statehood (and where, she said, she lost her virginity in a hayloft). Later moves took her to France and to New York, where she learned English before studying counseling.

Dr. Westheimer taught university courses in human sexuality before a producer at WYNY, an NBC affiliate, engaged her for a quarter-hour segment, first broadcast on Sundays after midnight. Within a year, she had graduated to the 10 p.m. to 11 p.m. slot. Early fans donned T-shirts reading “Sex on Sunday? You Bet!”

The sexual revolution that began two decades earlier had liberated the masses from taboos but had done precious little to relieve problems such as erectile dysfunction and inability to attain orgasm. Like Julia Child charging onto public television to teach French cooking, Dr. Westheimer took to the radio waves to explain, in straightforward fashion, the ways of making love.

She was not the first on-air therapist; Joyce Brothers, for one, had preceded her by a generation. But few, if any, could match Dr. Westheimer’s combination of candor and can-do cheer. Furthermore, she speculated, people found her unthreatening.

“If I had been a tall blonde in a miniskirt and decollete,” she said to the Sunday Times of London, “if I had been young and pretty, it wouldn’t have worked.”

Dr. Westheimer told her listeners that “anything two consenting adults do in the privacy of their own bedroom is all right with me.” Masturbation, fantasies, love dolls – they were all fine by her.

Once, Newsweek magazine reported her response when she was asked for her opinion on a particular unconventional sexual practice. “What’s wrong,” she replied, “with peanut butter or new uses for onion rings as long as there’s a relationship?”

Her principal concern was safety. The New York Times recorded her reply to one young woman who, like so many others, had called because she was contemplating losing her virginity.

“Don’t do it,” Dr. Westheimer said. “I hear in your question that he is putting pressure on you. Listen to that inner voice that says you would like to wait. Tell him that Dr. Westheimer told you that you can hug and kiss and neck and pet, but that you are just not ready.”

Whenever she was ready, Dr. Westheimer cautioned the woman, she should not forget a reliable contraceptive.

Many calls came from members of the opposite sex. Two of the problems Dr. Westheimer addressed most frequently over the years, she noted, were premature ejaculation and the inability to maintain an erection.

“Men, all of you are ignorant!” she once said. “You are constantly worried about the size of the penis. Let’s shout it from the rooftops: The size of the penis has nothing to do with the sexual satisfaction of the woman.”

She became an irresistible subject of parodies, including on “Saturday Night Live.” Some mental health professionals cautioned that it was impossible for her to properly diagnose or counsel a person in a brief exchange conducted on the air.

Dr. Westheimer countered that she simply was educating listeners so that they could prevent unintended pregnancies, avoid venereal disease and improve their sex lives. The critics aside, it was practically unanimous: She made good television.

“Once you’ve talked sex with Dr. Ruth,” TV critic Tom Shales once wrote, “can it ever be as good with anyone else?”

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A tragic childhood

Karola Ruth Siegel, an only child, was born in Frankfurt, Germany, on June 4, 1928.

She said she first learned about sex when she discovered in her father’s library an illustrated volume that her parents had attempted to keep out of her reach. It was the book “Ideal Marriage: Its Physiology and Technique,” a popular 1920s manual by the Dutch gynecologist Th. H. Van de Velde. Far from constraining her, she said, her orthodox Jewish upbringing taught her that sex within marriage was good.

A week after Kristallnacht in 1938, Nazis took her father to a work camp. “I was looking out of the window,” she told the London Guardian, “and I saw my father boarding a covered truck … He forced himself to smile and that was the last time I saw him.”

She saw her mother for the last time the following year, from the window of the train that transported her and other Jewish children to Switzerland. Her grandmother, she recalled, ran after her along the platform.

At a children’s home, surrounded by youngsters who had likewise been deprived of their families, “Karola” shared her knowledge of topics such as menstruation. For several years, she received letters at the orphanage from her family. Then, one day the letters stopped.

Like many other European Jews who had survived, she tried to make a new life in Israel. “I never killed anybody,” she once told USA Today of her Haganah service, “but I know how to throw hand grenades and shoot.” In one skirmish, she was badly wounded by the shrapnel of a cannonball.

She married an Israeli soldier, David, and moved with him to France, where she trained in psychology at the Sorbonne before they divorced. In the mid-1950s, she settled in the United States with her French boyfriend, named Dan, whom she married after becoming pregnant. They also were divorced. In 1961, she married Manfred Westheimer, also a refugee from Nazi Germany, who died in 1997.

She worked as a maid while pursuing her education, receiving a master’s degree in sociology at the New School for Social Research in 1959 and a doctorate in education from Teachers College, Columbia University, in 1970. Among her mentors was Helen Singer Kaplan, a leader in psychosexual therapy.

During the early years of her career, Dr. Westheimer worked with Planned Parenthood and as a sex education teacher, developing a specialty in sex therapy. For years she ran a private counseling practice in addition to her broadcast programs. Her franchise included a series of top-selling books, including “Dr. Ruth’s Guide to Good Sex,” “Sex for Dummies” and “Dr. Ruth’s Sex After 50: Revving Up the Romance, Passion and Excitement!”

Her book “First Love: A Young People’s Guide to Sexual Information,” published in 1985, included the erroneous pointer that “the safe times [for sex] are the week before and the week of ovulation.” A New Jersey librarian caught the typo – the intended word was unsafe – prompting a recall of more than 100,000 books.

“Even big shot people like myself make mistakes,” Dr. Westheimer said at the time.

There was a Dr. Ruth board game and Dr. Ruth videocassettes. She inspired a play, “Becoming Dr. Ruth” by Mark St. Germain, and had frequent cameo appearances in television and film.

Survivors include two children and four grandchildren.

Once, an interviewer asked Dr. Westheimer what she thought her legacy would be.

“I think people will say she had the guts – in Jewish tradition, it’s called chutzpah. She had the nerve to talk about things other people were too worried to talk about,” she told The Washington Post. “I don’t mind if people say they get aroused by my radio program,” she continued. “I think that is great. I provided you with foreplay. But take it seriously. Don’t let boredom creep into your bedroom.”