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♪ [Theme Music] ♪
SHERYL MCCARTHY: Hello, I'm Sheryl McCarthy of the
City University of New York.
Welcome to One-to-One.
Each week we address issues of timely and
timeless concern with newsmakers and the
journalists who report on them,
with artists, writers, scientists,
educators, social scientists,
government and non-profit leaders.
We meet each one-to-one.
Today's guest is so well-known that like
Madonna, Lady Gaga and Dr. Phil she doesn't even have
to use her last name.
She is simply Dr. Ruth -- sex educator,
author of more than 30 books,
lecturer, radio and television host,
mother and grandmother.
Most of us are familiar with her quirky,
always practical advice on how to achieve good sex
and few of us can resist her sparkly personality
and motherly charm.
But how did she come to be who she is?
An off-Broadway show that's running right now fills in
some of the gaps in the remarkable saga that
brought her from Germany to New York City and
worldwide renown and from being Karola Ruth Siegel
to being Dr. Ruth.
Becoming Dr. Ruth is playing at the Westside
Theater on West 43rd Street. Welcome.
DR. RUTH WESTHEIMER: Thank you.
SHERYL MCCARTHY: So how did this play come to be?
DR. RUTH WESTHEIMER: About two years ago,
a little more, Mark St. Germain,
the playwright, had a play on off-Broadway called
Freud's Last Session and I went to see it.
I actually saw it twice.
It was a wonderful play.
The fellow who played Freud,
Martin, said Dr. Ruth can I come to see you?
I was very happy.
My gosh, Freud has a *** problem.
I gave him an appointment the next day,
come to my office.
He didn't have a *** problem.
He said the playwright who wrote Freud's Last
Session, Mark St. Germain, wants to write a play about me.
I said no, they just did a BBC documentary,
I'm one of 12 extraordinary women.
I said I don't want to dig into my past again and
then I went home.
On my answering machine I found a message from
Mark St. Germain that was so sweet.
He said that he appreciates what I've done
and who I am, he would never do anything that I
wouldn't want. I called.
I said let's meet tomorrow.
Two seconds after I met him,
I said go ahead.
SHERYL MCCARTHY: You were seduced, in other words.
DR. RUTH WESTHEIMER: Seduced is the right word
but he's married, be careful.
SHERYL MCCARTHY: Okay, okay.
Now Debra Jo Rupp is the actress who plays you.
What do you think of her performance and does the
play give an accurate account of your life?
DR. RUTH WESTHEIMER: First of all,
congratulations to you Sheryl that you went to
see the play, which means you do your homework.
I like that.
I'm a good professor -- Yale, Princeton and now Columbia.
SHERYL MCCARTHY: I get an A, I get an A, okay.
DR. RUTH WESTHEIMER: You get an A,
who knows maybe an A+.
So she does a superb job because it's exactly
capturing the sadness of some of my background.
Nazi Germany, there's a picture of Hitler if you
remember, and she captures my spirit.
To acknowledge the terrible past -- that I was
an orphan at the age of 10 and a half?
- but to also she is fantastic in giving credit
to my spirit of saying I have to make a dent in the world.
I'm the only one who can talk like this,
openly about sex, in those years.
Today everybody talks about it.
So I have to use that ability to make a dent in
family life, in saying how important it is to have
*** satisfaction in your relationship,
how important the relationship is.
She goes from the sadness to the hilarious with some
of the questions that I answer on the radio and on
television and she does a super job.
SHERYL MCCARTHY: The play is really about how your
background, your family background,
your history contributed to who you became.
You grew up in an upper middle class Orthodox
Jewish family in Frankfurt, Germany,
a happy childhood it sounded like.
DR. RUTH WESTHEIMER: A superb happy childhood.
A grandmother who lived with us,
who had nothing else to do but to take care of me,
she was a widow, she was very learned and she was
very religious and that's her function.
My father and mother lived in her apartment and until
the age of 10 and a half?
I went to a wonderful Jewish school,
the [INDISCERNIBLE] School in Frankfurt,
and I had lots of friends.
I was an only child.
SHERYL MCCARTHY: You credit your grandmother
with encouraging you to have a very cheerful
personality, that people respond to that.
DR. RUTH WESTHEIMER: It's very interesting
because during the writing
based on my autobiography, based on interviews with
me that Mark St. Germain did.
He interviewed my daughter,
Miriam, my son, Joel.
He interviewed Pierre who is my Minister of
Communications for 32 years now.
It's very interesting.
She captures -- and Mark St. Germain,
in writing it -- this kind of importance of keeping
your head up, of not becoming depressed because
then you're of no use to anybody.
But not to deny the upbringing,
not to deny the horrible experience that I've had
by being sent to an orphanage.
SHERYL MCCARTHY: Right.
Because your father was -- the Nazis come in.
Your father's taken away to a work camp.
You never see him again.
And at at 10 -- was it age 10 that you were sent on
one of the kinder transports to Switzerland,
which sort of saved your life.
DR. RUTH WESTHEIMER: Sheryl,
if I wouldn't have been on that train to safety to
Switzerland -- and I'd stayed in that orphanage
for six years during the whole World War II,
until the allies won the war,
thank God -- I would not be here because I would have
perished with my whole family -- the grandparents
on the other side, on my mother's side,
the grandmother on my father's side.
So I'm very grateful.
I go to Switzerland every year.
SHERYL MCCARTHY: Do you?
DR. RUTH WESTHEIMER: Yes.
SHERYL MCCARTHY: You never saw any of your family
again after that?
DR. RUTH WESTHEIMER: I never saw them again.
SHERYL MCCARTHY: What was it like realizing,
coming to the realization that you would probably
never see them again?
DR. RUTH WESTHEIMER: It took a long time.
In my diaries -- it's wonderful that the teacher
at the home in Switzerland,
at the orphanage, encouraged us to write
diaries, which I still have and used my
autobiographical book on that.
I kind of always still hoped that who knows,
that maybe through the Red Cross,
maybe through some other organization that maybe
somebody had survived.
It's interesting.
When you don't have a date -- and Debra Jo Rupp plays
that beautifully -- when you
don't have a date that somebody died,
there really -- you can't hold onto a date.
Now I do memorial dates because I'm a member,
I'm on the Board of the Museum of Jewish Heritage,
a living memorial to the Holocaust.
I participate in Holocaust events every year.
I've even been to West Point.
There was an event for Holocaust Memorial.
But it's difficult to have then the mourning that is
so important.
SHERYL MCCARTHY: Right, if you have no date, right.
DR. RUTH WESTHEIMER: In the Jewish tradition,
mourning is something wonderful because you sit
in the apartment for seven days.
Then you walk around the neighborhood saying a
certain prayer to show your faith to the
neighborhood by saying I have been in deep
mourning, the seven days are over,
there are 30 more days of some kind of mourning but
not so strict.
And you say to the community I'm available to
be part of the community again.
SHERYL MCCARTHY: Right, and then you go on with your life.
At 18 -- I think it was 18 -- you moved to Palestine.
Why did you go to Palestine?
DR. RUTH WESTHEIMER: First of all,
I was in Switzerland knowing that we couldn't
stay in Switzerland once the war was over.
To go back to Germany was no question and I became
an ardent Zionist because I believed and still
believe that -- I go to Israel every single year --
I believe that Jews need a country of their own.
If they had had an Israel then there would have been
a country to take those Jews in danger from
Germany, from Poland, from all of the other European
countries that Hitler captured.
So I became an ardent Zionist.
I'm still going every year,
however I have no complaints about being
Dr. Ruth in the United States.
When I was in Israel in 1948 all of us -- it wasn't
an act of heroism on my part --all of us participated in
some kind of military group and I became a
sniper in the Yisrael, in the forerunner of the
Yisraeli defense forces.
It's called the Haganah.
SHERYL MCCARTHY: Okay.
DR. RUTH WESTHEIMER: I have to tell you,
I don't know how that had come.
I am 4'7".
I wasn't taller then -- maybe an inch taller,
not much.
SHERYL MCCARTHY: But you could shoot.
DR. RUTH WESTHEIMER: I could aim and shoot and I
knew how to throw hand grenades,
but I've never killed anybody.
SHERYL MCCARTHY: Okay.
But I'm not going to mess with you anyway.
DR. RUTH WESTHEIMER: No, but if I had to kill
somebody I would say stand there and I'll shoot
through your legs.
But I was very badly wounded.
SHERYL MCCARTHY: Yes, you were,
in an explosion, right.
You had your first *** experience in the kibbutz
that you lived on and I gather that's typical for
Jewish young people, that's where they often
come to *** awakening.
DR. RUTH WESTHEIMER: Maybe in some extent.
It's a wonderful simple life.
You dance the whole night on Friday night.
You live in a countryside.
You work very hard.
I worked very hard.
But at the same time, you have that enthusiasm that
you know that you are doing something for the
Jewish people.
SHERYL MCCARTHY: Right.
DR. RUTH WESTHEIMER: The guy -- I won't mention his name
because we were friends for a very long
time; he's still alive.
I'm still friends with his wife.
SHERYL MCCARTHY: Okay.
DR. RUTH WESTHEIMER: But he was in the British army
fighting the Nazis from Egypt and he looked fantastic.
Sheryl, you can't imagine.
In that uniform he was just -- I must have had
something for uniforms.
We had a wonderful love affair and I don't want to
trivialize about who loses their virginity,
but I did consciously talk about it because it was a
wonderful experience.
SHERYL MCCARTHY: Okay.
Well, that's great.
You married a young Israeli soldier and,
because he went to study medicine,
you moved to Paris where you studied at the Sorbonne.
That marriage ended and you wound up winning a
scholarship to the New School here in New York,
which is -- and came here with your French boyfriend?
DR. RUTH WESTHEIMER: And I have to tell you,
there is now -- which it doesn't say in the play,
but I'm telling you, Sheryl -- there is now a
Ruth Westheimer fellowship that pays tuition for
other students.
SHERYL MCCARTHY: At the New School?
DR. RUTH WESTHEIMER: Yes.
There's also one at Teacher's College,
Columbia University because they lent me money
for my doctorate.
The New School gave me money for my Masters.
And I'm somebody, if you want to describe me in
terms of my academic background,
I'm very grateful.
So there are scholarships all over.
If you find some people who want to give me some money,
whoever gives me money for the scholarships--
not for me-- has good sex for the rest of their life.
SHERYL MCCARTHY: Oh, my goodness, oh.
Well, I think the phones are going to be ringing.
We're going to take a short break,
then we'll be back with more with Dr. Ruth
Westheimer after the following message.
♪ [Theme Music] ♪
SHERYL MCCARTHY: Welcome back to One-to-One.
I'm Sheryl McCarthy of the City University of New
York and I'm talking with Dr. Ruth Westheimer,
who single-handedly revolutionized the way we
talk about sex -- openly and with humor.
So I'm going to scroll forward.
You studied Sociology.
You had your daughter, Miriam.
But that marriage broke up and you became a single mom.
But then you met Fred Westheimer,
another Jewish refugee, on the ski slopes.
What was the appeal?
DR. RUTH WESTHEIMER: Oh boy,
when you say the appeal, it was immediate because
Fred Westheimer was short -- not as short as me -- he
was educated, he was a chief engineer.
He had come from [INDISCERNIBLE] through
Portugal, came to the United States to study.
He played the harmonica.
SHERYL MCCARTHY: Oh, my goodness.
DR. RUTH WESTHEIMER: He played the guitar.
I went up the ski slope with him and already I
decided I'm going to marry him.
He was 35.
He had never been married.
He was a very eligible bachelor.
He had some girlfriends.
I have to tell you something that's not in the play.
There was one girlfriend where he left his guitar
and I didn't want him to go back to that
girlfriend, not even to get it.
I borrowed $35 -- that was an enormous sum -- and
bought him a brand new guitar.
SHERYL MCCARTHY: Oh, well there you go.
DR. RUTH WESTHEIMER: And broke the Westheimer
Manuever, as I call it.
SHERYL MCCARTHY: And you got your man.
DR. RUTH WESTHEIMER: He called me his ski accident
because I met him on the ski slope.
So that was a good marriage for almost 40 years.
SHERYL MCCARTHY: Okay, and you had a son, Joel.
DR. RUTH WESTHEIMER: Right,
and he adopted Miriam so Miriam is Westheimer;
Joel is Westheimer.
SHERYL MCCARTHY: And the marriage,
how many years?
DR. RUTH WESTHEIMER: Almost 40.
SHERYL MCCARTHY: Wow.
It was a job with Planned Parenthood that set you on your
what was to become your career path.
DR. RUTH WESTHEIMER: I worked in public health there.
First I worked in market research selling towels
and then I worked in public health research.
The money ran out on that government project and
fortunate for me that the money ran out because I
still would do that.
And then I got a position at Planned Parenthood of
New York City.
I became a Director of Research.
I followed 2000 patients and their contraceptive
and abortive history.
Abortion was still illegal.
I trained paraprofessionals to be
family planning counselors.
I worked in East Harlem, 116th Street,
in the health department.
All of the people that I trained,
paraprofessionals, were either Black or Puerto Rican.
It was at the height of unrest in Harlem.
But I'm somebody, from my background coming out of
Nazi Germany being in this great country here,
I was not afraid and I ran a beautiful project,
used that data for my doctoral dissertation at
Teacher's College University,
where I'm now at Teacher's college,
Columbia University.
We are now teaching a course on the family.
SHERYL MCCARTHY: Okay.
And you're Dr. Ruth because you got your
doctorate in education?
DR. RUTH WESTHEIMER: Right.
SHERYL MCCARTHY: Now I think the play says that
you were surprised at the lack of knowledge about
sex that these women in Harlem and that was what
got you interested in the subject.
Did you find American attitudes towards sex
prudish, even childish or just uninformed?
DR. RUTH WESTHEIMER: It's very interesting,
Sheryl, because we in this country have the best
scientifically validated data about *** matters
that has ever been available.
France has some data but we have the best.
First Kinsey, Masters and Johnson,
Helen Singer Kaplan at Cornell who trained me --
I worked with her for seven years -- and the idea of
that prudishness, that Europeans are so much
better is nonsense.
We hear, yes we have certain religious
attitudes and we have people who certainly have
issues with contraception and abortion,
but in the whole big picture we are much advanced.
France has some research but we have the very best.
In terms of we know that what is sex therapy and
sex talk about television and on radio,
which I wasn't the only one but I was kind of the
one that people listened to because I was already 50.
I didn't sit there with there with the decollete.
I didn't sit on television with a short skirt.
I was already a motherly type and people listened to me.
SHERYL MCCARTHY: But Americans,
we talk about sex but are we more open,
natural about sex than say the French?
Although I've heard that, somebody said recently
that we think the French are having all the sex and
they're not having as much as we think they are.
DR. RUTH WESTHEIMER: That's true.
We in this country now know, there's a big change.
The questions I get are more explicit.
The vocabulary is more explicit.
Nobody says anymore she's with child,
they say she's pregnant.
We know that women have heard the message -- and
I'm not the only one, I always say that -- that a
woman is to take the responsibility for her
*** satisfaction.
She can't say if he loves me he has to know what
pleases me.
She has to show him how she needs to be stimulated.
SHERYL MCCARTHY: And do you think American women
are more progressive in that area than others?
DR. RUTH WESTHEIMER: No question.
SHERYL MCCARTHY: Okay.
DR. RUTH WESTHEIMER: There are less women who haven't
heard the talk between you and me and others that she
has to take the responsibility.
There are less women who don't have orgasms and
that is something that I'm very pleased about.
SHERYL MCCARTHY: That's very interesting.
DR. RUTH WESTHEIMER: Very interesting.
There are still some women who think that an ***
has to be through intercourse and we have to
say some women have it through intercourse,
wonderful, have a good time.
Many women need stimulation,
either before or after intercourse in order to
have an ***.
That's the important message.
SHERYL MCCARTHY: So it was a speech to a group of
broadcasters that got your attention and you get
your first a 15 minute radio show,
which became a big hit.
Where did you get -- now you didn't claim to be a
sex therapist, you were an educator -- so where did
you get this information that you gave to people
that was so amusing?
Where did it come from?
DR. RUTH WESTHEIMER: Okay.
So here is what happened.
First, I did 15 minutes.
I built it up slowly.
Then I did 10 years on WYNY,
NBC Radio across this great country and Canada.
Where I always said on the air you cannot do therapy,
I am a sex therapist.
On the air you can only educate.
People who need further help have to see a professional.
But I could tell people go and see a professional.
I could tell people -- and I did it with humor
because in the Jewish tradition it says a lesson
taught with humor is a lesson retained.
So I couldn't tell a joke but I could use humor to
teach, which I still do.
SHERYL MCCARTHY: So where did you get ideas like the
whipped cream?
Where did this come from?
DR. RUTH WESTHEIMER: That's very funny.
I see that you did see the show,
I'm very happy about that.
Any time when somebody asked me about a certain
position and I said if it doesn't look right to you
practice on an ice cream cone,
use some whipped cream, make believe it's a banana
and everybody got the message.
I didn't even have to even be more explicit.
I think that came out a little bit of my head by
saying I have to make it into a way that is
scientifically correct to do the basis.
That's why I worked at Cornell with Helen Singer
Kaplan for seven years.
She was an M.D., a Doctor of Medicine,
and a PhD.
She was a wonderful mentor.
But I was able...
SHERYL MCCARTHY: And was sex therapy,
was that her area?
DR. RUTH WESTHEIMER: Yes.
SHERYL MCCARTHY: Okay.
DR. RUTH WESTHEIMER: Yes, that was her specialization.
All of her books were like a Bible to me.
And I was able to take that information and make it a
little bit fun so that people remembered it.
SHERYL MCCARTHY: Sex is not the main theme of
Becoming Dr. Ruth.
It's about how your entire life -- and particularly
your earlier life -- has been shaped by,
sometimes haunted by what happened to you and your
family in Germany.
We only have about two more minutes but how has
your life and your career as a sex educator been
shaped by that experience?
DR. RUTH WESTHEIMER: The first lesson I can talk
about is the importance of early socialization. My 10
and a half early years, as you said before,
were wonderful in that loving household,
in a good school, with other grandparents,
living on a farm.
That gave me the basic good feeling of being a
loved child.
Then afterwards came the obligation because I'm a
survivor, I was not killed.
1 million and a half Jewish children were killed.
I have an obligation to make a dent in society.
I didn't know that would be through sex or sex
education and talking about sex but I knew that
I have to show that there is a reason -- I have to
show it to myself -- that I survived and now I'm 85,
that I survived where so many others perished for
the only reason that they were Jews.
SHERYL MCCARTHY: So what's next for Dr. Ruth?
DR. RUTH WESTHEIMER: Okay, two more books.
I just did a book for the [INDISCERNIBLE] of Alzheimer's.
I'm coming out with a book right now,
The Myth of Love, like Lady and the Swan.
I'm doing it with Jerry Singerman from the
University of Pennsylvania Press.
And a brand new book -- I'm telling you -- I'm doing a
book about the Scrooge effect,
people who are very tight.
Now are they tight right now because all the people
are worried about Social Security?
Are they worried about healthcare?
Are they worried because they live longer?
Are these people who want to keep some money for their
children and grandchildren?
Who are these people who were always tight with money?
I'm going to prove that in order to be a good lover
you have to be generous.
I'm not saying you should give away everything you
have, I'm saying you have to be generous because you
cannot be a good lover unless you rejoice in the
pleasure of your partner.
SHERYL MCCARTHY: Okay, all right.
The Scrooge effect, I like that.
DR. RUTH WESTHEIMER: The Scrooge effect.
SHERYL MCCARTHY: You heard it here.
DR. RUTH WESTHEIMER: From Charles Dickens.
You heard it here.
SHERYL MCCARTHY: First, okay.
DR. RUTH WESTHEIMER: First.
I just signed the contract.
The book will be out very shortly.
SHERYL MCCARTHY: Okay, okay.
Well, we're looking forward to that.
DR. RUTH WESTHEIMER: Thank you.
SHERYL MCCARTHY: I want to thank Dr. Ruth Westheimer
for joining me today.
Read one of her books, see Becoming Dr. Ruth at the
Westside Theater on West 43rd Street,
or hear her speak at one of her many lectures
around town.
For the City University of New York and One-to-One,
I'm Sheryl McCarthy.
♪ [Theme Music] ♪
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