‘Dr. Ruth’ Westheimer, Holocaust Orphan Who Became America’s Sex Guru, Dies at 96

She dedicated her life to helping people forge connections — both physically and emotionally

Maria Puente,

AARP

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Published July 13, 2024

Disney General Entertainment

Ruth Westheimer, America’s most improbable “sexpert” and four-decade media star, who channeled her childhood Holocaust experiences to help people make intimate connections and combat loneliness, died July 12 in her New York home. She was 96.

The death was announced by Pierre Lehu, a publicist and her coauthor on several books. No cause of death was noted.

“Dr. Ruth,” as she was universally known, acquired multiple identities over her long life: German-born Holocaust survivor, lonely child in a Swiss orphanage, trained sniper in Jerusalem, academic in Paris, maid and grad student in New York, sex therapist with a busy private practice, and eventually “Grandma Freud,” sex adviser to the nation.

At the end of her life, Westheimer took on a new role: New York’s first loneliness ambassador, named by Gov. Kathy Hochul (at Westheimer’s own urging) to lead a campaign against the problem of widespread social isolation and loneliness, which worsened during COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns.

“I am deeply honored and promised the governor that I will work day and night to help New Yorkers feel less lonely!” Westheimer said in a statement after the announcement in November 2023.

“I don’t want to be known only as a sex therapist," she said at the time. "I want to be known as a therapist.”

But sex therapy is how Westheimer became an unforgettable cultural figure in the 1980s. That’s when she burst into Americans’ consciousness as a diminutive dynamo (she was 4 foot 7) of sex advice, delivered with candor warmed by folksy charm and good humor, on her call-in radio show, Sexually Speaking. That was followed by an equally popular TV version, The Dr. Ruth Show; then The All New Dr. Ruth Show; two teen advice shows, What's Up, Dr. Ruth? and You're on the Air with Dr. Ruth; plus Hebrew versions of her shows in Israel. (Besides English and Hebrew, she was fluent in German and French.)

“Get some” became her tag phrase.

In 2019, the documentary Ask Dr. Ruth explored how her tragic past shaped her remarkable career and personality. Born Karola Ruth Siegel, she was only 10 when her parents sent her by train in the Kindertransport program with other Jewish children out of Nazi Germany to safety. “I had to leave almost all my dolls and toys in Frankfurt, and I ended up in an orphanage in Switzerland,” she told AARP The Magazine in 2015. "There was only one doll I could take with me, and on the train I gave it to a younger child who was crying. She needed the doll more than I did.”

In the orphanage she and the other girls were trained in household chores so they’d be able to make a living. Her father was murdered in a concentration camp, and her mother disappeared.

Later she’d collect dollhouses, full of “families of dolls and tiny toys and teddy bears for the children.”

In 1948 she joined the Israeli Haganah, an underground paramilitary group, to serve in the Israeli War of Independence, and was trained as a sniper. She was wounded in an attack during her brief military career. Eventually she moved to Paris to study psychology at the Sorbonne, before heading to New York City, where she worked as a maid — that orphanage training came in handy — while getting a master’s degree in sociology at the New School, and later a Ph.D.

German-American sex therapist Ruth Westheimer poses for a portrait with some of her books in New York.

Oscar Abolafia/TPLP/Getty Images

Her Sexually Speaking call-in radio show, which debuted in 1980, began her rise to fame.

She was ubiquitous for years, appearing in sitcoms and children’s TV shows, on game shows, late-night and daytime talk shows, in commercials and soap operas and on records. She graced magazine covers, popped up in an interactive computer game, hosted Playboy instructional videos, and was spoofed four times on Saturday Night Live. There’s been a one-woman play about her life, Becoming Dr. Ruth (an actress took on the Dr. Ruth role); someone else invented a board game, Dr. Ruth’s Game of Good Sex.

In between all the discussions about sex, through the decades, Westheimer was teaching, lecturing and writing — many, many books, beginning with Dr. Ruth’s Guide to Good Sex in 1983. At last count, she had written nearly 50 books, three in 2018 alone.

And not just about sex. She wrote or cowrote books about Islam, the Bedouin, Ethiopians and the Druze. She wrote about art, psychology, mythology and athletics. She wrote books for children (Leopold), about grandparenting (Roller-Coaster Grandma: The Amazing Story of Dr. Ruth), and about the joys of music (Musically Speaking: A Life Through Song).

Westheimer had lived in her three-bedroom apartment in Washington Heights for more than six decades, keeping close to her friends in a neighborhood that housed many other German Jewish refugees as well as the YMHA and two synagogues of which she was a member. “Because of my experience with the Holocaust, I don’t like to lose friends,” she told The New York Times in 1995.

One of her latest projects was a concert based on her books about the grandparent-grandchild connection. (A widow since the death of her third husband, Fred Westheimer, in 1997, her survivors include two children and four grandchildren.)

And Westheimer was still enthusiastic about romance and sexual fantasies into her 90s. In 2021, AARP talked to her about how people can stay positive and resilient during the pandemic. She suggested, for one, that people fantasize to lift their mood, then shared an endearingly G-rated fantasy of her own:

“So, I can’t ski anymore, but I fantasize about this: I put on my best ski outfit — it’s like a red parka — and I get a good-looking ski instructor with a skimobile. I go up the mountain on the skimobile and hold on to him tight. Then at the top of the mountain, I stay on the skimobile, and go down with the good-looking ski instructor. I don’t get out of the skimobile.

“How fortunate that in your fantasies, you can make yourself the best lover on earth.”

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Maria Puente is a longtime breaking news reporter, most recently at USA TODAY, where she covered the British royals for decades in the LIFE section, along with other news involving celebrities and entertainers.