Ruth Westheimer
From Free net encyclopedia
Ruth Westheimer, Ed.D (born Karola Ruth Siegel on June 4, 1928) is a popular American sex therapist and author best known as Dr. Ruth.
Westheimer was born in Frankfurt, but since her family was Jewish she was sent without her parents to Switzerland when she was ten years old and spent World War II there.
In 1945, she learned that her parents had perished in the Holocaust, most likely at the Auschwitz concentration camp, and she decided to immigrate to Israel, where she joined the Haganah in Jerusalem. Notwithstanding her height (4 ft 7 in) she was trained as a sniper and was seriously wounded in action by an exploding shell during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. It was several months before Westheimer was able to walk again.
In 1950, she moved to Paris, where she taught and studied psychology at the University of Paris. She emigrated to the United States in 1956, and earned her Master's in sociology and a Ed.D. in education from Teachers College, Columbia University. She completed post-doctoral work in human sexuality at New York-Presbyterian Hospital.
Her pioneering show Sexually Speaking aired for the first time in 1980 as a 15-minute taped show. The show has increased in popularity since then and is now broadcast over the entire United States. Its format is noted as being candid, humorous, and respectful.
Westheimer has written a number of books on human sexuality, including Dr. Ruth's Encyclopedia of Sex and Sex For Dummies. She has also worked as a lecturer and a professor at New York University and taught a seminar on sex recently at Yale University. She currently has a nationally syndicated television show and a nationally syndicated radio show. She is multilingual, speaking English, German, French and Hebrew.
In recent years she has made regular appearances on the PBS Television children's show Between the Lions as "Dr. Ruth Wordheimer", where in a parody of her role as a therapist, she helps anxious readers and spellers overcome their fear of long words.
She was married three times. Her third marriage, to Manfred Westheimer, lasted until his death in 1997. She has two children and numerous grandchildren.
External links
- Dr. Ruth's website
- {{{2|{{{name|Ruth Westheimer}}}}}} at The Internet Movie Database
- German American Heritage Biography
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