By RODNEY HO/ rho@ajc.com, originally filed Thursday, November 5, 2015
In the 1980s and 1990s, Dr. Ruth Westheimer was America's First Lady of Sex Therapy, first on the radio and then on cable TV. Somehow, a tiny Jewish woman with a German accent was able to counsel millions about how to make sex fun and exciting but not at all dirty.
Though her profile is no longer as prominent in 2015, at age 87, she remains as vibrant as ever. She will be stopping at the Marcus Jewish Community Center's annual book festival November 10 to talk about her life and latest book "The Doctor is In: Dr. Ruth on Life, Love and Joie de Vivre." (Buy tickets here.)
Retirement is not in her vocabulary. "For me, it's not to retire but to rewire," she said in a recent phone interview.
She had written an autobiography in 1987, which chronicled her escape from the Holocaust, being raised in an orphanage in Switzerland and becoming a sniper in the Israel War of Independence.
"It was more about my life than the philosophy of life," she said. So for her latest book, she decided to take elements of her colorful life and provide advice. Among her lessons: embrace your passions, focus on the present, stand up for your principles and actively combat boredom.
She said many of her early challenges led her not to give up on life but to make the most of it: "Millions of Jewish children died. I'm alive. What you have to do is acknowledge the terrible things that happened and make the best of it by doing something to make the world a better place."
For her, that meant sex education, something she continues to do via lectures at places such as Yale, Princeton and Columbia University.
"I’ve had a great opportunity in this country to make a dent in the knowledge of sexuality," she said. "That's been wonderful."
She believes today, women are far more sexually satisfied than they were in the 1980s when she was on the radio. "There are more men who know what do," she said. But people, she said, still grapple with boredom in the bedroom.
"People tend to engage in sex in same positions the same days of the week," she said. "There is still a tremendous amount of teaching to be done."
The access to pornography on the Web has shifted her view of how to deal with kids and sex. "I used to say parents should not interfere, not look at the diaries of their youngsters," she said. "I have changed my mind. Parents now have an obligation to know what their children are seeing on the Internet. Some children put naked pictures out. And there is a lot of bullying going on."
She doesn't just provide advice about sex. At a recent Forbes 30 Under 30 conference, she was asked to go on stage in Philadelphia and held a mock therapy session with three couples who are in business together. "It was about how they manage relationships in their working life," she said.
You won't see her doing reality TV though she has certainly been pitched many an idea. "I think it's exploiting people," she said. She has said no so many times, TV producers "don't even ask me anymore."
But she has shown up over the years on talk shows such as "Dr. Oz" and "The Doctors." And she still relishes the times she got to talk to Johnny Carson on "The Tonight Show" back in her heyday. "He loved me because I talked about things nobody had ever talked about before on TV," she said.
She isn't particularly political but said she didn't like seeing Planned Parenthood get beat up recently in the news over videos regarding fetus tissue. "I'm very sad it became a political football instead of a public health issue."
She said she has never let her height (4 foot 7) be a hindrance. "As a teenager, I always thought nobody would marry me because I was so short," she said. "I've been married three times. But I think one thing about being so short is that's why I was a good sniper in the Haganah [an underground Jewish military organization in the late 1940s.]. At the Sorbonne [where she trained as a psychologist in the 1950s], it was so crowded in the classroom so a good-looking man man lifted me up on the window sill. I've always made the best out of being so short."
BOOK LECTURE
Dr. Ruth K. Westheimer
7:45 p.m. Tuesday, November 10
$18 members, $24 non-members
Marcus Jewish Community Center of Atlanta
5342 Tilly Mill Road, Dunwoody
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