Jim Dykes interviews Dr. Ruth Westheimer, famous sex therapist
Dr. Ruth Westheimer interview by Jim
Dykes
(published 1996 in the New York Citizen News) Edited down
The Little,
Big-Hearted Woman Who Became a Celebrity Because she Wasn’t Afraid to Talk
About Sex.
One of Washington
Heights’ Foremost Citizens Discusses her Eventful & Inspiring Life in a
Personal Interview with Jim Dykes.
“Write your name down…I’ll
give you a plug,” whispered Dr. Ruth from the kitchen, waiting for WOR
Radio’s Joan Hamburg to put her on the air from home in an impromptu interview
within MY interview! Barefoot and dressed in a powder blue housecoat, Dr. Ruth
Westheimer answered the front door of her 12th floor Cabrini Blvd.
apartment looking more like the little Jewish grandmother (which she is) that
the world’s most famous sex therapist. It is instantly apparent (even though
she professes not to be a “morning person”) that from the minute this 4’ 7’
dynamo gets up in the morning, it is go-go-go all day with meetings, phone
calls and interviews. Greeting her guest (me) with a smile and a nod, and armed
with her trusty cordless receiver tucked under her chin, she gestured that her
telephone conversation with her rabbi (who had set up our interview) was coming
to an end and she would soon be available to start the interview. The second
the phone was down, however, it rang again with the call from radio host Joan
Hamburg who requested “only 3 minutes” to discuss Dr. Ruth’s new book.
This was the apartment where Dr. Ruth and her husband of
many years Fred Westheimer had lived for many years and where they had raised
their family. The spacious apartment was made extraordinary by the spectacular
views of the Hudson River and Fort Tryon Park’s Cloisters. The apartment is
full of piles of colorful clutter reflecting an incredibly busy, diverse life
for this former Lehman and Brooklyn College professor who only became famous at
age 53 because a friend—the famous sex therapist Dr. Helen Singer Kaplan--
asked her to speak at a luncheon at the Waldorf for radio & TV executives.
Strewn around on every available surface are contracts from publishers,
letters, documents and speaking invitations.
Dr. Ruth is a lecturer, therapist, author and media
personality but in her moving and highly readable autobiography ALL IN A
LIFETIME, an entirely different personal perspective emerges. Born Karola Ruth
Siegel, in Frankfort, Germany, she was the only child of a notions salesman and
his wife. They lived in a small apartment and her grandmother also lived with
them, sleeping in the living room.
In 1939, at the age of 10, she was sent to Switzerland to a
boarding school for Jewish children to escape what became known as The
Holocaust. The book is made even more interesting due to the fact that as a
child she kept copious diaries and notes and saved all letters. She said that one day, her letters (and
checks) from her parents just stopped coming and years later she discovered
their fate in the camps. After the war, she emigrated to Israel, became a
soldier and a teacher and lived on a kibbutz. Later on she moved to Paris with
her first husband to study at the Sorbonne. The marriage ended and in the 1950’s
Ruth arrived in New York to continue her studies first at the New School and
later at Columbia Teacher’s College.
J.Dykes: What was
the year you arrived in New York?
Dr. RUTH- 1956
J.D.- And you
immediately moved to Washington Heights where you have lived ever since. At
that time, hadn’t Washington Heights earned a reputation for being a bastion of
German intellectual refugees?
D.R.- I would say
not only the intellectuals like Kissinger and others, I would say of German
Jews because there are very many German Jews here who come from villages and
moved to the bigger cities in Germany, then just before the war, were fortunate
enough to move here so it is in terms of German Judaism, very much of a cross
section that lives in Washington Heights. Rabbi Lehman can recommend some books
about this migration.
NOTE: Rabbi Robert Lehman is the rabbi of the
800-member Hebrew Tabernacle on Fort Washington Avenue, of which Dr. Ruth is an
active member. Dr. Lehman is mentioned in the acknowledgments of all Dr. Ruth’s
books and is known as a long-time friend and advisor.
J.D- Washington
Heights has changed a lot since 1956. Then it had one of the lowest crime rates
in the city, and today it’s got one of the highest. Does that bother you and
what can be done?
D.R.- Of course
it bothers me…but it doesn’t only bother me on a personal level, it bothers me
on a city-wide level. I love the city of New York, and the escalating crime
rate bothers me. The police are trying to do their best, and what I think has
to happen here if you ask me with my life experience, coming out of Nazi
Germany, having lived in Israel, I do believe we have to reinstitute citizen
patrols. I’d be the first one to volunteer once a month to walk the streets of
this neighborhood.
J.D.-Another
issue…some New York parents seem to be opposed to condom distribution in public
schools. Do free condoms, in your opinion, contribute to promiscuity?
D.R.-The
chancellor knows where I stand because I said it publicly and I said it to him
in Washington. I do not want to see sex clinics in our junior high or high
schools…I want to see comprehensive health clinics. We have a terrible time
with AIDS, Hepatitis B and other diseases not to mention the problem of
unwanted pregnancies. It is not true what some of the critics say that it would
mean that we are saying to young people, “Go out and do it.” No one knew about
AIDS when my first book: “Dr. Ruth’s
Guide to Good Sex” came out.
J.D.- How would
you have felt if your children, Miriam and Joel, were given condoms in school?
D.R.-First of
all, I am a Jewish Mother, so for me anything under 17 is too young anyhow, so
let’s put that on the table, and now I am a Jewish grandmother. Having said
that, when a youngster, I can’t say which age, decides to be sexually active,
then I want contraception to be available including for my own children.
J.D.- How do you
reconcile your sexual therapy business and your beliefs in contraception with
your Orthodox Jewish upbringing?
D.R.- In the
Orthodox Jewish tradition, a person is only supposed to be sexually active
after the marriage ceremony. Strict Catholics also believe this. In the Jewish tradition, there is nothing
against contraception, and I am doing a book on that for next year. The only
definite thing the Jewish tradition says is that you need to and you ought to
have children. Also, I am not Orthodox now. I come from the Orthodox Jewish
tradition and I am very Jewish, but I do not adhere to the religious cult any
longer. By the way, Jim, I must stop and tell you that you are one of the best
prepared reporters I have ever had the pleasure of being interviewed by. The
last time I was interviewed by such a good reporter was when Diane Sawyer
interviewed me for 60 MINUTES.
J.D.-Thanks Dr. Ruth…I’m
also from Kentucky like Diane Sawyer, so maybe it’s a “Kentucky” thing.
NOTE FROM JIM: The
interview goes on for another two pages but it mostly is dated now, since it
was first published 20 years ago and deals with issues that are passe now as
well as her latest book at the time about Ethiopian Jews….Surviving Salvation.
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