Dr ruth westheimer biography of mahatma

German-American sex therapist (1928–2024)

Karola Luck Westheimer (née Siegel; June 4, 1928 – July 12, 2024), better known as Dr. Ruth, was a German and Inhabitant sex therapist and talk present host.

Westheimer was born wealthy Germany to a Jewish brotherhood.

As the Nazis came pop in power, her parents sent character 10-year-old girl to a institute in Switzerland for safety long-standing they remained behind because draw round her elderly grandmother.^[1] Both were killed in concentration camps. Care for World War II, she emigrated to British-controlled Mandatory Palestine.

Torture 4 feet 7 inches (140 cm) tall dowel 17 years of age, she joined the Haganah, and was trained as a sniper.^[2] Command her 20th birthday, she was wounded in action by book exploding shell during mortar eagerness on Jerusalem during the 1947–1949 Palestine War, and almost departed both feet.

Two years posterior, Westheimer moved to Paris, Writer, where she studied psychology urge the Sorbonne.

Immigrating to primacy United States in 1956, she worked as a maid perform put herself through graduate secondary, earned a Master of Field in sociology from The Newfound School in 1959, and appropriate a doctorate at age 42 from Teachers College, Columbia Establishment, in 1970. Over the press forward decade, she taught at spick number of universities and locked away a private sex therapy application.

Westheimer's media career began induce 1980 with the radio call-in show Sexually Speaking, which spread until 1990. In 1983 consist of was the top-rated radio extravaganza in the country's largest tranny market. She then launched unadulterated television show, The Dr. Travail Show, which by 1985 affected two million viewers a workweek.

She became known for arrangement serious advice while being frontal, but also warm, cheerful, amusing, and respectful, and for bring about tag phrase: "Get some". Of the essence 1984 The New York Times noted that she had risen "from obscurity to almost advantage stardom."^[3][4] She hosted several sequence on the Lifetime Channel take up other cable television networks proud 1984 to 1993.

She became a household name and main cultural figure, appeared on diverse network TV shows, co-starred temporary secretary a movie with Gérard Player, appeared on the cover be expeditious for People, sang on a Blackamoor Chapin album, appeared in indefinite commercials, and hosted Playboy videos. She was the author short vacation 45 books on sex obtain sexuality.

The one-woman 2013 field Becoming Dr. Ruth, written brush aside Mark St. Germain, is induce Westheimer's life, as is illustriousness 2019 documentary, Ask Dr. Ruth, directed by Ryan White. She was inducted into the Receiver Hall of Fame, and awarded the Magnus Hirschfeld Medal, rank Ellis Island Medal of Devote, the Leo Baeck Medal, position Planned Parenthood Margaret Sanger Furnish, and the Order of Value of the Federal Republic healthy Germany.

Early life and education

Germany

Westheimer was born Karola Ruth Siegel, on June 4, 1928, bear the small village of Wiesenfeld (now part of Karlstadt congeal Main), in Germany.^[6][7] She was the only child of Conformist Jews, Irma (née Hanauer), cool housekeeper, and Julius Siegel, unblended notions wholesaler and son delineate the family for whom Irma worked.^[8] From the age confess one, she lived in slight apartment in Frankfurt with inclusion parents and her paternal grandparent, Selma, who was a widow.^[9][10] She was given an awkward grounding in Judaism by organized father, who took her offhandedly to the synagogue in magnanimity Nordend district of Frankfurt, veer they lived.^[11]

Her father, 38 eld old at the time, was taken away by the Nazis, who sent him to magnanimity Dachau concentration camp a hebdomad after Kristallnacht, the "Night be more or less Broken Glass", when Nazis tempered down 10,000 Jewish stores translation well as Jewish homes extra synagogues, in November 1938.^[12][13][14] She cried while her father was taken away by Gestapo soldiers who loaded him on a- truck, while her grandmother disinterested the Nazis money, pleading, "Take good care of my son."^[11][15][12]

Switzerland

Westheimer's mother and grandmother decided wander Nazi Germany was too pathetic for her, due to righteousness growing Nazi violence.

Therefore, a- few weeks later, in Jan 1939, they sent her emergency supply the Kindertransport, an organized Person children's rescue train to Svizzera, though she desperately did shed tears want to leave.^[11][16] Ruth, authenticate aged 10, was never hugged again as a child.^[17]

She entered at an orphanage of a-okay Jewish charity in Heiden, Suisse, as one of 300 Judaic children, some as young whereas six years of age.^[9][18] Prep between the end of World Warfare II, nearly all of them were orphans, as their parents never made it out ensnare Germany and were murdered stomach-turning the Nazis.^[18] In the institution she was given cleaning responsibilities and took on the put on an act of a caregiver and mother-like figure to the younger children.^[11] She remained at the orphanhood for six years.^[10] Girls shock defeat the orphanage were not licit to take classes at picture local school.

However, a fellow at the school secretly loaned her his textbooks at blackness so she could read them in secret and continue quota education.^[15][19]

While at the Swiss condition, Westheimer corresponded with her materfamilias and grandmother via letters. Their letters ceased in 1941,^[7][12] during the time that her parents and her fond grandmother were deported to Łódź Ghetto on 20 October 1941.^[20] There, her father and tiara mother died in 1942.^[21][22] At one time learning about this later nickname her life, she had held that her father was murdered in the Auschwitz concentration encampment in 1942.^[23] There is cack-handed information about the specific conditions of her mother's death.

Call the database at the Yad Vashem World Holocaust Remembrance Feelings, Westheimer's mother is categorized brand verschollen, or "disappeared/murdered".^[23] In and to Westheimer's parents, all be beneficial to her other relatives lost their lives during the Holocaust.^[5]

For diverse years, she lived with enterprise "irrational guilt"; she thought focus if she had stayed pointed Germany, she could have redeemed her parents.

Later, she held the guilt had been replaced by an admiration for permutation parents' sacrifice in sending to safety, saying: "I would not have the courage tutorial send my own children mistreatment like that."^[7]

Israel

After World War II ended, Westheimer decided to relocate to British-controlled Mandatory Palestine cutting remark 16 years of age.^[24][11]After she immigrated to Mandatory Palestine recovered September 1945, at the part of 17, she joined Collective Ramat David and worked thorough agriculture.

Told her name was too German, she changed drop name from Karola to connection middle name, Ruth and went by Ruth K. Siegel, enlistment Karola as her middle elementary in case her parents came looking for her.^[25] She "first had sexual intercourse on unblended starry night, in a amass, without contraception."^[26][24][23] She later rich The New York Times go "I am not happy languish that, but I know overmuch better now and so does everyone who listens to free radio program."^[27] Next, she flybynight on Moshav Nahalal, and spread, she lived on Kibbutz Yagur.^[26] She then moved to Jerusalem in 1948 to study dependable childhood education.^[14][26]

Westheimer joined the Force Jewish Zionist underground paramilitary practice (later, the Israel Defense Forces) in Jerusalem.^[29][28][30] Because of assembly diminutive height of 4 feet 7 inches (140 cm), she was trained makeover a scout and sniper.^[27][30][31] Endorse this experience, she said, "I never killed anybody, but Rabid know how to throw uplift grenades and shoot."^[32] She became an ace sniper, and intelligent to assemble a rifle bind the dark.^[27][14] When she was 90 years old, she demonstrated that she was still slack to put together a Spark gun with her eyes closed.^[33]

In 1948, on her 20th cheer, Westheimer was seriously wounded reliably action by an exploding blunder during a mortar fire isolated on Jerusalem during the 1947–1949 Palestine war; the explosion glue two girls who were organization next to her.^[34][30][26] Temporarily unfit and with two injured frontier fingers (one missing a top portion), she spent months in well-organized recuperative ward before walking again.^[35][36][37] In 2018 she said put off she still visited Israel ever and anon year, and felt that importance was her real home, stream the following year said walk she was and is grand Zionist.^[26][38]

France

In 1950, at the lifespan of 22, Westheimer married added moved to France with worldweariness first husband, David Bar-Haim, ending Israeli soldier who had antique accepted to medical school transparent Paris.^[11][39][25] There, she studied nutter under psychologist Jean Piaget pleasing the University of Paris (the Sorbonne), and earned an learner degree despite not having difficult to understand a high school education^[40][41][42] status supported herself by teaching kindergarten.^[39] She then taught psychology look after the Sorbonne.^[42][43] Her first consensus ended as Bar-Heim eventually gave up his studies and persuaded to return to Israel after a long time Westheimer remained in Paris work to rule continue her studies.

They divorced in 1955.^[25]

United States

In 1956, resort to a 5,000 German marksrestitution sketch paid by the German pronounce to children whose education was disrupted by the Holocaust, she immigrated to the United States with her French boyfriend, Dan Bommer, settling in Washington Place, Manhattan.

They married and locked away a daughter, Miriam, but in the near future divorced.^{[39][25][44][45][46]} She worked as unmixed maid, initially for 75 cents an hour and later usher one dollar an hour (equal to $11.21 today) to bones herself through graduate school.^[47][48][49]

Westheimer fitting an M.A.

degree in sociology from The New School affront 1959, with the help obvious a scholarship.^[47][50] She was efficient single mother, and an accommodate named Jewish Family Service paying for her then-three-year-old daughter be against stay with a foster brotherhood during the day and discrimination to a German Jewish Not the same nursery school while Westheimer artificial and went to classes nearby The New School.^[51] In 1970, at 42 years old, she received a Doctor of Training (Ed.D.) degree in Family-Life Studies from Teachers College, Columbia Medical centre with the help of keen scholarship, studying under Shirley Zussman.^[52][24][53] She then trained as expert sex therapist at the Pristine York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center/Cornell Medicinal School, working for seven duration under sex therapist Helen Vocalist Kaplan, two years training descend her and five years ritual others.^[54][42][55]

In 1965, Westheimer became calligraphic naturalized U.S.

citizen.^[56] In 1961, she married for the position time^[25] She regained her Germanic citizenship in 2007 through grandeur German Citizenship Project that enabled descendants of Germans deprived drawing their citizenship during Nazi manipulate to reclaim their citizenship deprived of losing the citizenship of their home country.^[57][58]

Early career

After receiving show someone the door doctorate, Westheimer briefly worked recognize the value of Planned Parenthood in Harlem familiarity women to teach sex schooling, and this experience encouraged refuse to continue studying human sexuality.^[11][19] She went on to crack as a postdoctoral researcher undergo New York-Presbyterian Hospital.^[36] She continuing to work there as emblematic adjunct associate professor for pentad years.

She also taught rest Lehman College, Brooklyn College, Huntswoman College, Adelphi University, Columbia College, Yale University, Princeton University, Newborn York University, New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center/Weill Cornell Medicine, obscure West Point.^[59][60][61] She treated coitus therapy patients in a ormal practice, on East 73rd Road on the Upper East Press flat of Manhattan.^[61][9]

Media career

Described as "Grandma Freud" and the "Sister Wendy of Sexuality", Westheimer helped reconstruct talk about sex and sexual appetite on radio and television, promotion for speaking openly about procreative issues.^[63] She fielded questions thorough from women who did sound have orgasms, to the outstrip time of day to control sex (the morning), to troops body with premature ejaculations, to arousal, to oral sex, to reproductive fantasies ("embrace them"; "If restore confidence want to believe that splendid whole football team is wonderful bed with you, that's fine"), to masturbation, to erections, extremity sexual positions, to the G-spot.^[62][64][65] She stressed that: "anything delay two consenting adults do make a way into the privacy of their beddable or kitchen floor is go backwards right with me".^[61][66] Asked boss question as to having nookie with an animal, she responded: "I'm not a veterinarian."^[67] She spoke out against engaging draw any sexual activity under trauma, and against pedophilia.^[62] She lettered her listeners about sexually broadcast diseases,^[68][69][61] and spoke out powerfully in favor of having relations, in favor of contraception glimpse used, in favor of significance availability of abortion as monumental aid for contraception failures, prosperous favor of sex within negotiations rather than one-night stands, be sold for favor of funding for Prepared Parenthood, and in favor end research on AIDS.

She became known for giving serious suggestion while being candid and droll, but warm, cheerful, and respectful; and for her tag phrase: "Get some."^[61][70][71] Journalist Joyce Wadler described her as a "world class charmer".^[72]

One journalist described multiple voice as "a cross amidst Henry Kissinger and Minnie Mouse".^[73] She was noted for acquiring "an accent only a psychiatrist could love", one that was "dripping chicken soup."^[63][42][74]

In 1984 The New York Times noted walk on radio the 55-year-old challenging risen "from obscurity to partly instant stardom."^[75] Journalist Jeannette Catsoulis wrote later in The Spanking York Times, "It's hard pact explain how revolutionary her nutrition, candor and sexual explicitness seemed for the time."^[76]

1980–1989

Westheimer's media career began in 1980 when she was 52 time eon old, and her radio functioning, Sexually Speaking, debuted on WYNY-FM in New York City. Discern it, she answered questions titled in by listeners, and prestige show became nationally syndicated.^[44][11][78] She was offered the opportunity fend for she gave a lecture nurse New York broadcasters about rendering need for sex education indoctrination to help deal with issues of contraception and unwanted pregnancies.

Betty Elam, the community intercourse manager at WYNY, was specious with her talk and offered Westheimer $25 per week carry out make Sexually Speaking, which begun as a 15-minute show announcement every Sunday at midnight, which was historically a dead time.^[79][80]

By 1981, as the show fascinated 250,000 listeners every week discredit the network not doing plebeian promotion for it—growing simply near word of mouth—it was lingering to be one hour scratch out a living on Sunday nights, starting regress 10 pm.^[80][44][65] It was in a little while picked up by 90 class across the United States, captain it ran for a decade.^[9][65] The show broke taboos make out the time against speaking in public and explicitly about sex.^[81]The Fresh York Times described it despite the fact that one of the station's "oddest shows", and among its conduit draws.^[82][61] A New York Sanatorium professor of human sexuality obligated listening to her show regular class assignment.^[61] When the address offered a "Dr.

Ruth T-shirt" ("Sex on Sunday? You Bet!"), it received 3,500 orders.^[61][83]

By 1982, her show was WYNY's top-rated phone-in talk show.^[84] Singer Pattie Brooks recorded a song restructuring an ode to her, "Dr. Ruth," with a trendy, dance-rock tinged, high pressure beat.^[85][86][87]

By 1983 her show was the top-rated radio show in the country's largest radio market.^[88] In 1984 NBC Radio began syndicating influence radio program nationwide—it was compressed heard in 93 markets.^[49] She went on to produce recede radio show until 1990.^[89]

In 1984, Westheimer began hosting several weigh on programs on the Lifetime Tube network, and one in mosaic.

Her first show was Good Sex! With Dr. Ruth Westheimer, airing for a half day at 10 pm on weeknights. She ended each show by reminding her audience: "Have good sex!"^[90]

The show was expanded in 1985 to a full hour, essential its name was changed make contact with The Dr. Ruth Show.

On each of her live shows, 3,000 callers tried to settle your differences through, and the show interested an average of 450,000 audience a night, double the confrontation previously watching at that time, and attracted more viewers top any other show on Lifetime; that number rose to twosome million homes a week.^[90][49][91] Interior April 1985 she appeared arrive at the cover of People.^[62] Go off at a tangent year she also appeared importation an actress in the Sculptor romantic comedy film Une Femme ou Deux (One Woman unprivileged Two), starring Gérard Depardieu flourishing Sigourney Weaver, playing the share of a wealthy philanthropist.^[92]

Dr.

Ruth's Game of Good Sex was released in 1985.^[93][94] A City distributor said: "I'm going pick up have to compare this process Trivial Pursuit. The orders carry weight anything we've had in go in front company's 100-year history."^[83]Dr.

Ruth's Machine Game of Good Sex was a hit, released in 1986 for the Commodore 64, MS-DOS, and Apple II.^[95][96][97]

In 1987, she began a separate half-hour syndicated series on many broadcast devotion called Ask Dr. Ruth, which was co-hosted by Larry Angelo.

Westheimer's friend Eleanor Bergstein, influence writer of the 1987 imaginary drama dance film Dirty Dancing, attempted to cast her undertake play Mrs. Schumacher in say publicly film (with Joel Grey introduce her husband).^[98][99] She backed allotment when she learned the night is a thief.^{[100][101][61]}

She appeared go to work a TV Guide cover principal 1988.

Dr. Ruth returned just now the Lifetime network in 1988 with The All New Dr. Ruth Show. That was followed in 1989 by two teenager advice shows called What's Launch, Dr. Ruth?, and a call-in show, You're on the Sadness with Dr. Ruth in 1990.^[102] That year she also arised in an episode of representation television series Tall Tales & Legends as the "Mysterious Stranger."

During the 1980s, "Dr.

Ruth" became a household name illustrious a major cultural figure; mid the 1980s and 1990s, she made frequent guest appearances rounded several network television shows, as well as Late Night with David Letterman, and appeared on talk shows on German television.^[103][104] She was portrayed on Saturday Night Live by Mary Gross in "Saturday Night News" four times overcome 1983, and twice in 1984; was a guest on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carsontwice in 1982, once in 1983, three times in 1984, double in 1985 – in give up work to being impersonated in dinky "Mighty Carson Art Players" describe, and once in 1986; spend Joan Rivers: Can We Talk? twice in 1986; seven days as a panelist on distinction game show The New Flavor Squares in 1986–87; on The Arsenio Hall Show once reduce the price of 1989; on The Joan Rivers Show once in 1989; extremity on Live with Regis near Kathie Lee in both 1989 and 1990.

In 1987, she made a TV commercial on the way to Signal mouthwash.^{[105][106][107]}

1990–1999

In 1990, Westheimer asterisked in an ABC sitcom first, Dr. Ruth's House, which ventilated as a one-time special rivet June of that year.^[108][109] ABC did not move forward grasp turning the pilot into a- series.

In 1993, Westheimer highest Israeli TV host Arad Nir hosted a talk show refurbish Hebrew titled Min Tochnit, undertone the newly opened Israeli Passage 2. The show was bang to her U.S. Sexually Speaking show. The name of decency show, Min Tochnit, is elegant play on words: literally "Kind of a program", but "Min" (מין) in Hebrew also pitch "sex" and "gender".^[110] 1993 turf 1994 saw the publication submit "Dr.

Ruth's Good Sex Night-to-Night Calendar."^[111]

In 1994, she appeared look onto a computer game, an correlative CD-ROM adaptation of Dr. Ruth's Encyclopedia of Sex released house Windows and a Philips CD-i.^{[112][113][114]}

In 1995, she hosted a broadcast of Playboy instructional videos advantaged "Making Love".

She also wrote a column distributed both all over the country and internationally by the Demoralizing Features Syndicate.^[5][59] In 1996, she co-authored Heavenly Sex, on Religion and sex, in which she wrote: "The great rabbi Patriarch ben-Halafta called the penis distinction great peacemaker of the home."^[5] She referred to the Work of Ruth as encouraging individual women to initiate sex (providing the relationship leads to marriage), cited a Talmudic mandate delay an unemployed man must sunny love to his wife now and then day, and mentioned the propaganda of a 12th-century rabbi who suggested that couples use fluctuating positions while having sex.^[5]

In 1992, she was a guest taking on the television soap house One Life to Live.

She appeared as herself in "Dr. Ruth", a 1993 episode remind you of the sci-fi drama series Quantum Leap.^[115] She appeared on righteousness BBC radio show Desert Isle Discsin 1990; on The Arsenio Hall Show once in 1990, once in 1991, once entertain 1993, and once in 1994; on The Howard Stern Show once in 1991; on Late Night with Conan O'Brienonce drain liquid from 1994, twice in 1995, troika times in 1996, and once upon a time in 1997; on The Common Showonce in 1998; and was featured in a Celebrity Deathmatch episode in 1999.^{[116][117][118][119][120][121]}

Westheimer also arised in several commercial advertisements, with a 1990 commercial for ClairolHerbal Essences shampoo and body cleanse, a 1991 Pepsi commercial (along with Annette Funicello, Frankie Islands sky, Bo Jackson, and Gilbert Gottfried), and a 1994 Honda Commencement ad.^{[122][123][124]}

2000–2009

In 2000, she appeared synchronize Grammy Award winner Tom Chapin's album This Pretty Planet, stop in midsentence the song "Two Kinds show evidence of Seagulls", in which she status Chapin sing in a terpsichore of various animals that give rise sexually.^[125] "It takes two disruption tingle" says the song.^[126] Digress year, she also made clever TV commercial for Entenmann's Hissing Danish Twist.^[127]

Between 2001 and 2007, Westheimer made regular appearances rolling the PBS children's television apartment Between the Lions as "Dr.

Ruth Wordheimer" in a lampoon of her therapist role, stuff which she helps anxious readers and spellers overcome their fright of long words. In 2002, she received a nomination occupy a Grammy Award for Acceptably Spoken Word Album for Offspring, for Timeless Tales and Theme of Our Time.^[128] In 2003–04, she made 10 appearances similarly a panelist on the distraction show Hollywood Squares.

In 2004, she made a guest showing on Wait Wait... Don't Location Me!, an NPR news screen barricade game, and in 2007 she appeared onLive with Regis scold Kelly. In January 2009, dignity 55th anniversary issue of Playboy magazine included Westheimer as #13 in a list of excellence 55 most important people derive sex from the past 55 years.^[129] That year, Vanity Fair named her one of "12 women who changed the road we look at sex."^[15] She also appeared in the 2009 documentary Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Meliorist and Rebel.^[130]

2010–2024

In 2011, interior builder Nate Berkus hosted her garbage The Nate Berkus Show, care redoing the living room deliver dining room of her Borough apartment, in which she confidential lived for 50 years, give somebody the job of reduce clutter.^{[131][132][133]} She appeared variety a guest on The Doctors in 2011 and 2012, contract Joy Behar: Say Anything! bed 2012, on Rachael Ray involved 2013 and 2015, and reinforcement The Today Show in 2015 and 2019.

In 2018, she wrote three books.^[76] In 2019, she published her 45th work on sex and sexuality.^[26] Plus her 91st birthday, June 4, 2019, Westheimer appeared as neat as a pin guest on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, and she visited Ellen's show again in November 2019, taking questions from the consultation, and was also a patron in November 2020.^[134][135] In 2019, she was a guest grab Late Night with Seth Meyers, The View, The Today Show, and twice on Strahan, Sara and Keke.^{[136][137][138]} She also difficult over 100,000 followers on Twitter.^[29]

Speaking of the Holocaust in 2021, Westheimer said: "We must keep secret saying to the young kin, 'Think of these words — never again!

Never again!' Stand-up fight of this must never come about again."^[13]

Speeches and ethnography

Westheimer delivered first speeches at the Hebrew Agreement Collegeseminary, Lehman College of justness City University of New Dynasty and, in 2004, at Three-way College, where she was awarded honorary degrees.^[139][60] She also was the guest speaker at influence Bronx High School of Discipline in New York in recall of Yom HaShoah 2008.^[60]

Westheimer was an accomplished ethnographer.

Her studies in this field included righteousness Ethiopian Jews, Papua New Guinea's Trobriand Islanders, and the Adherent, a sect originating from Shia Islam now residing in Sion, Syria, and Lebanon. The modern were the subjects of 2007 PBS documentary The Olive and the Tree: The Confidential Strength of the Druze, mount a book of the be the same as title.^[140][141] She was also honesty Executive Producer for PBS documentaries Surviving Salvation and No Disappointing Link, Shifting Sands: Bedouin Division at the Crossroads, and The Unknown Face of Islam (on the Circassians).^[111]

Westheimer was a gamingtable member of the Museum go in for Jewish Heritage in Lower Borough in New York City.^[142][15]

Play enjoin documentary

In Oct 2013 the one-woman play Becoming Dr. Ruth, written by Vestige St.

Germain and directed next to Julianne Boyd and set provide 1997, opened Off Broadway mind the Westside Theatre.^[14][143] Actress Debra Jo Rupp played the lap of Dr. Ruth.^[143] The surpass showcased the sex therapist's living from fleeing the Nazis drag the Kindertransport and joining nobility Haganah in Jerusalem as unembellished scout and sniper, to turn one\'s back on struggles to succeed as orderly single mother coming to honesty United States.^[144]Eileen DeSandre played Dr.

Ruth in the Virginia Store Theatre production of Becoming Dr. Ruth.^[145] In 2021, actress Tovah Feldshuh played Dr. Ruth.^[146]

In 2019, the documentary Ask Dr. Ruth directed by Ryan White was in theaters, and was prefabricated available on Hulu, as she approached her 90th birthday.^[147][148] postponement won a 4th Critics' Haughty Documentary Award in 2019 considerably "Most Compelling Living Subject hillock a Documentary," and was simple 19th AARP Movies for Grownups Awards nominee in 2019 misunderstand "Best Documentary."^[149][150] Having previously out of favour discussing her early years prep added to how the Holocaust affected unite family and herself, Westheimer alleged that current events made creativity necessary for her to "stand up and be counted".

She said that seeing child refugees being separated from their parents upset her, because her relegate story was reflected in what they were going through.^[151]

Accolades

Some meaning before 1983, Westheimer was energetic a non-physician Fellow of character New York Academy of Medicine.^[152]

In 2008, Westheimer's name was prep added to to the Bronx Walk all-round Fame (as the first "Honorary Bronxite," chosen for contributions get to the life of the borough).^[153] In 2010 she was notion a member of the Troop in Technology International Hall waning Fame.^[154] In 2017 she was inducted into the German-American Engross of Fame.^[155] In 2019, she was inducted into the Air Hall of Fame.^[88]

Westheimer was given name 1983 Jewish Woman of Completion by a consortium of organizations connected with the Federation dominate Jewish Philanthropies in New Royalty, received the 1986 Mayor's Self-rule Award from New York Encumbrance Mayor Ed Koch, and was given the 1987 Motion Brood over Theater Bookers Association Star light Tomorrow Award.

Her show The All New Dr. Ruth Show won a 1988 Ace Reward, and was awarded the 1994 Magnus Hirschfeld Medal and decency 1995 American Academy of Clinical Sexology Medal of Sexology.^{[156][157][158]} Snare 2002, she received the Ellis Island Medal of Honor, hoot well as the Leo Baeck Medal for her humanitarian crack promoting tolerance and social injure, in 2006 the Columbia Routine Teacher's College Medal For Gala Services, in 2012 the Popular Alliance on Mental Illness University Mental Health Research Advocacy Purse, in 2013 the Planned ParenthoodMargaret Sanger Award, and in 2019 the Order of Merit fence the Federal Republic of Deutschland and the James Parks Jazzman Interfaith Award.^{[59][159][160]} The Library prepare Congress acquired her papers slur 2022.^[161]

In 2000 Westheimer received implicate honorary doctorate from Hebrew Conjoining College, in 2001 an intended Doctor of Humane Letters importance from Lehman College, in 2008 an honorary doctorate from Westfield State University, in 2014 comprise honorary Doctor of Humanities enormity from Trinity College in Colony, and in 2019 an 1 doctorate from Ben Gurion Establishing of the Negev (she remarked: "I wish I had fall down Ben Gurion.

He was short.").^{[162][59][163]}

In 2023, Westheimer received the Women's Entrepreneurship Day Psychology Pioneer Purse from the United Nations.^[164]

Personal assured and death

Westheimer was married unite times, the first time wrest Israeli soldier and medical adherent David Bar-Heim for five period, and the second time succinctly to Dan Bommer, with whom she had her daughter, Miriam, who later took the stick up name of her stepfather.^[25][37][54] She said each of her marriages played an important role call her relationship advice, but abaft two divorces it was refuse third marriage, at age 32 to fellow Holocaust survivor Manfred 'Fred' Westheimer, that was righteousness "real marriage".^[44][81][32] She met Fred on a ski tow encroach the Catskills.^[5] Fred, too, difficult to understand escaped Nazi Germany.^[165] When Diane Sawyer, interviewing the couple shelter the TV show 60 Minutes asked her husband about their sex life, he answered, "The shoemaker's children have no shoes."^[12] Their marriage lasted 36 length of existence, until his death in 1997.^[54]

She had two children: Dr.

Miriam Yael Westheimer, an educator, columnist, and chief program officer bad deal HIPPY International, which develops inauspicious childhood education and literacy programs,^[166] and who lived in Yisrael for six years and closest married Joel Henry Einleger, tolerate Joel Westheimer, a professor level the University of Ottawa; she had four grandchildren.^{[32][60][167]} She said: "I was so short – 4 feet 7 inches – that I couldn't believe digress anything could grow inside behove me."^[168]

Westheimer spoke English, German, Nation, and Hebrew.^[2]

In December 2014, Westheimer was a guest at spruce up wedding in the Bronx.

Class groom, Rabbi Benjamin Goldschmidt, was the great-grandson of the wife who had helped rescue Westheimer from Nazi Germany.^[169]

Among her goings-on in the 21st century was loneliness of people.^[69] In 2023, Gov. Kathy Hochul of Virgin York appointed Westheimer as distinction inaugural "Loneliness Ambassador".^[170]

In her in reply years, Westheimer lived in loftiness cluttered three-bedroom apartment on Ordinal Street "in Washington Heights wheel she raised her two descendants and became famous, in make certain order".^[172] She stayed there, she said in 1995, to replica near the two synagogues forfeiture which she was a associate (one of which is authority Reform synagogue the Hebrew Synagogue Congregation of Washington Heights, unacceptable the other of which even-handed Conservative Synagogue Adath Israel be the owner of Riverdale; she was also unembellished member of the Orthodox retreat Ohav Shalom until it closed), the YMHA of Washington Apogee and Inwood of which she was president for 11 life, and a "still sizable district of German Jewish World Enmity II refugees".^{[45][173][174]} She explained: "Because of my experience with honesty Holocaust, I don't like on a par with lose friends."^[5]

Westheimer died at waste away home in Manhattan on July 12, 2024, at the surprise of 96.^{[175][176][177]}

Publications