[theme music plays]

Jen Richler: Hi, it’s Jen Richler, here to kick off the fall season of Can We Talk?, the podcast of the Jewish Women’s Archive, where gender, history, and Jewish culture meet.

But first, a word from our sponsor, Avodah. Avodah’s Justice Fellowship is designed to build the field of Jewish social justice leaders in Chicago and New York City. For eight months, Fellows attend evening learning sessions that help them deepen their justice analysis, build a pluralistic Jewish learning community, and explore the intersections between social justice and Jewish life. Visit avodah.net/serve to learn more and apply by September 25.

And now, onto the show. Just a warning that this episode includes sexual references and is for mature audiences only.

[radio clip plays]

Dr. Ruth: This is Dr. Ruth Westheimer, we are here on Sexually Speaking, 97 WYNY, you are on the air.

Caller: Hello Doctor, I enjoy your show a lot.

Dr. Ruth: Thank you.

Caller: Um, I was married before…

Dr. Ruth: Yes?

Caller: When I was around 18…

Dr. Ruth: Yes?

Caller: Then I got divorced.

Dr. Ruth: Yes?

Caller: After that I had… [fades out]

Jen: Dr. Ruth Westheimer died earlier this year at the age of 96. She was a trailblazer for her candid and joyful talk about sex. She regularly used words like "masturbate" and "vibrator" on the air and spoke in a voice that a journalist once described as a "cross between Henry Kissinger and Minnie Mouse."

Dr. Ruth's radio show, Sexually Speaking, debuted in 1980 and was on the air for a decade. The clip you’re hearing is from 1982.

[clip plays]

Dr. Ruth: Let me ask you something. When you are with a man, and you give yourself an orgasm, thenyou do come? 

Caller: Yeah, but I have to touch myself.

Dr. Ruth: That's alright! What's wrong with touching yourself?

Caller: Well, you know how their ego gets? 

Dr. Ruth: Don’t worry about their ego—the important thing is that you feel sexually satisfied.

[theme music plays]

Jen: The show was groundbreaking for its time. No one else was talking about sexual pleasure—especially women's sexual pleasure—in such frank terms.

In this episode of Can We Talk?, we're remembering Dr. Ruth. First, we’ll talk with historian and author Rebecca Davis about Dr. Ruth's radical legacy. Then, we'll hear from the actress Tovah Feldshuh about what it was like to be friends with Dr. Ruth, to play her in a one-woman show, and to be with her in the days before she died.

[theme music fades]

Jen: The joy Dr. Ruth brought to her work was a fitting antidote to her painful past. Ruth Westheimer was born Karola Ruth Siegel in 1928 in a village outside Frankfurt, Germany. She was an only child. Shortly after Kristallnacht, she escaped from Nazi Germany on a Kindertransport. She survived the Holocaust in an orphanage in Switzerland. She never saw her family again.

After the war, Karola moved to Palestine, became a kibbutznik and trained as a sniper in the Haganah. She started going by Ruth because Karola sounded too German. After a brief stint in France, Ruth ended up in New York, a single immigrant mother working as a maid to put herself through graduate school at Columbia Teachers College, where she earned a Ph.D. in education. After that, she briefly worked for Planned Parenthood in Harlem, training women to teach sex education. She then trained as a sex therapist at Cornell and started her own therapy practice.

For Ruth, who once told a reporter she had to do something for others to justify being alive, becoming a sex therapist was a dream come true. But she never could have imagined the way her life was about to change. In 1980, she gave a talk to a group of New York broadcasters about the importance of sex education programming. The community affairs manager from a New York radio station was there and was so impressed with what she heard that she offered Ruth $25 a week to make Sexually Speaking. It started as a 15-minute show and aired on Sunday at midnight, usually a dead time for radio.

[clip plays]

Dr. Ruth: Sexually Speaking, you are on the air.

Caller: Hi, Doctor Ruth?

Dr. Ruth: Yes?

Caller: How you doing?

Dr. Ruth: Hi.

Caller: I just want to tell you that the boys in Canarsie love your show.

Dr. Ruth: Good! And tell the boys in Canarsie that I’m very glad.

Caller: Okay! [fades out]

Jen: Within a year, Sexually Speaking had a quarter of a million listeners, even though the station did nothing to promote it. The show was soon extended to an hour, moved to prime time, and was nationally syndicated on over 90 stations.

A few years later, Ruth launched The Dr. Ruth Show on TV. She also published bestsellers like Dr. Ruth's Guide to Good Sex.

Here’s Rebecca Davis, a historian at the University of Delaware and author of the new book Fierce Desires: A New History of Sex and Sexuality in America.

Rebecca Davis: Part of why Dr. Ruth worked as a messenger for sexual information is because she didn’t look like a scolding minister or Sunday school teacher, right? She didn’t look like somebody who would make you want to cross your legs, squirm out of your seat, and leave the room.

She really believed that sex should be fun, and she talked about that to anybody who would listen. She always used clear language to describe body parts and sex acts, and really wanted to destigmatize people's curiosity about their sexuality. She went on the Howard Stern Show, she went on Arsenio Hall, she went on Late Night with David Letterman. And she embarrassed the heck out of all of them by challenging them to say anatomically correct words for sex acts, for insisting to Howard Stern that size didn’t matter, and for trying to get Arsenio Hall to say “vagina.” She said, "You’re always talking about the penis. Why can’t we get you to talk about the vagina too?" She had incredible self-confidence in all of these different venues to talk to people about sexuality.

Jen: Here’s Dr. Ruth on Letterman in 1982.

[clip plays] 

[Dr: Ruth: An older woman called. She’s a widow, she does feel sexually aroused, and she has never used— we’ll just call it, in sexological language, “self-gratification,” which means masturbation— she never used it before, but I told her to do that. And I understand [audience laughs]... and I understand, I even said that, um, there… I’m a little embarrassed to say that to you here, but I’m not embarrassed when I say it on the radio, so I should say it! I even suggested to her, and the people out there just reminded me of that, that if she does want to feel something inside her vagina, that it’s perfectly alright, either use a cucumber or… [audience laughs, cheers.]                           

Jen: Letterman got so uncomfortable as Dr. Ruth was talking that he winced. When she mentioned the cucumber, he walked off set entirely—partly for comic effect, but maybe not entirely.

Rebecca: One of the things that was so unusual about her is that, on the one hand, there were these mainstream sex guides like The Joy of Sex and Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid to Ask, written by men, often from a presumptively heterosexual standpoint. They continued a theme that had been around since the 1920s and 1930s: Men, you should learn how to provide pleasure to your wife so that she will enjoy having sex with you. But not a message that said female sexuality was an end in and of itself. It assumed that men needed to learn these skills in order to have the sex they wanted.

She didn’t truck with any of that. She started from the point that there’s no difference between men and women in terms of levels of passion, interest, or pleasure.

Jen: How did Dr. Ruth connect her work as a sex therapist with her Jewish identity?

Rebecca: She spoke a lot about her Jewishness. She said she learned through her Orthodox Jewish upbringing that Jews are comfortable with sex and that enjoying sex with your partner is something Jews value and that there’s nothing to be ashamed of. I think it’s far more complicated than that, but at the very least, that was the message she took from her Jewish upbringing about sexuality.

Jen: Why does it matter—or does it matter, in some larger historical sense—that Dr. Ruth was Jewish?

Rebecca: Jewish women were disproportionately involved and visible and vocal in the feminist movement in the United States. A big part of American feminism was debunking myths about women’s sexuality and trying to create a women-centered body of knowledge about the female body and female sexuality. In that sense, though Dr. Ruth did not identify with the feminist movement, she’s part of a tradition of Jewish women being outspoken on these issues.

I do think there is something in Jewish tradition that destigmatizes sexual pleasure for its own sake. That has translated into a broader openness toward shame-free pleasure, which is far more complicated for Christians because of the way these things are taught. To be fair, American rabbis were not talking about sex very much when she was starting to do this. So it wasn’t that she was joining a chorus of other Jewish leaders being vocal about sex, but her message was well-received in the American Jewish community.

Jen: So you just mentioned the fact that Dr. Ruth did not identify as a feminist, and I think that is worth pausing on. I think some people—a lot of people—might find that surprising, given the way she advocated for women’s sexual pleasure for its own sake. Why do you think Dr. Ruth did not identify with the feminist movement?

Rebecca: I think it’s because she associated feminism with some of the radical feminism that came out of the late 1960s and early 1970s. In the documentary, her granddaughter presses her on this and says, "But Grandma, you’ve got to be a feminist! All the things that you do and say!" She does get her to say something to the effect of "I am a non-radical feminist."

There was an anger to 1970s feminism that was very necessary and, given what was going on, I think very appropriate. But Westheimer emphasized joy. I think it was a survival skill for her—to focus on what was good and to keep looking for the positive in things. Perhaps she was turned off by the negative or angry rhetoric she heard from the feminist movement.

Jen: Can you say a little bit about her embrace of the LGBTQ community early in her career and how that contrasted with attitudes in the organized Jewish community at the time?

Rebecca: None of the Jewish movements were openly embracing LGBTQ people in 1980. It was just starting in the Reconstructionist movement. It was just starting in corners of American Judaism to push for acceptance of openly gay people. But lesbian and gay synagogues had been founded separately, starting in the 1970s and into the 1980s, because LGBTQ people did not feel welcome as their full selves in mainstream synagogues.So she really was a very visible Jewish voice for full acceptance of people regardless of their sexual orientation.

And she, she would say, "I don't care anything else about what the configuration of bodies and genders is. Two consenting adults, and you're good to go."

Jen: So Dr. Ruth may have rejected the label of feminist and at least set herself apart from what she saw as radical feminism. But in an essay you wrote for the JWA blog, you refer to her as radical or to her legacy as radical in its own way. So can you say why?

Rebecca: Sure. Um, I think that, unfortunately, it remains a radical position to advocate for sexual pleasure for its own sake. And so much of the mainstream conversation around sexuality, particularly for women, is about danger and is about avoiding certain dangers—you know, harm reduction basically. And she did not take a harm reduction approach to sex education.She wanted to elevate the importance of, the joy of sexuality, uh, with her audiences.

And she was excited for women to, you know, experiment with vibrators. She was, um, totally, open to, you know, various kinds of sex play and sex toys. And those have remained, you know, into the United States today, often taboo subjects. Certainly, that's not going to be part of nearly any high school sex ed curriculum, um, but even in, you know, larger conversations, um, around sex ed policy or sexual health. And you know, I think Dr. Ruth was really putting those kinds of ideas front and center.

Jen: As Dr. Ruth made a name for herself by putting sexual pleasure front and center, she became a pop culture icon. She remained a regular on the talk show circuit well into the 2000s. In 2019, the documentary Ask Dr Ruth told her story. The film followed her from Switzerland, where she reminisced with an old boyfriend, to Israel, where she fondly recalled her first sexual encounter on a kibbutz haystack, to the modest Manhattan apartment she'd lived in for decades. And in 2021, she was the subject of the one-woman show Becoming Dr Ruth, starring Tovah Feldshuh.

[clip from Becoming Dr Ruth plays]

Caller: Hello.

Feldshuh as Dr. Ruth: You’re on the air!

Caller: Doctor Ruth, I’ve been going out with a guy for almost a year, and I like him a lot. The only thing I don’t like is that he wants me to have oral sex with him. I just can’t do it. The worst thing is that he loves to give me oral sex, and I love it. I feel so selfish. What should I do? 

Feldshuh as Dr. Ruth: Whipped cream or chocolate sauce. [audience laughs.] Whichever is your favorite… rub it on his penis, see if you like it then. If you still feel the same way, stop with the oral sex… but get some ice cream for your whipped cream and chocolate sauce!

Jen: Long before she played her on stage, Tovah Feldshuh got to know Ruth Westheimer through a mutual friend. The two women hit it off and discovered that they both loved a good party.

Tovah: We went to Purim celebrations together. I dressed as a cowboy. She dressed as Charlie Chaplin. We both dressed as men. She was at my daughter's wedding. She was at my son's wedding. When she was invited, she would come. So as Golda Meir says, Some people love you, and some people love you and show up. She showed up, and that made all the difference.

Jen: So can you say a little about how you prepared to play her?

Tovah: I hung out with her, and she welcomed it. I not only studied her interviews, but I asked to meet her, and she was open arms. I would go to her house at 900 West 190th Street. And I would work with her. I had her go through every line. And I noticed she was so, so optimistic that even the ends of her sentences went up. [voices goes up in exaggerated way].  And, and I spent time with her. I came to her home. I always brought flowers or cookies or flowers and cookies.I knew she was from a German background. I'm from an Austrian background. And you'd had to have kinderstube. You had to have good manners.

I was around her a lot. I met Joel, I met Miriam.

Jen: Her kids.

Tovah: Right, I studied all—she had tremendous, tremendous—and she showed me all her scrapbooks and everything she had kept. Um, all the letters from her parents somehow she was able to keep till they stopped coming.

Jen: When Ruth suffered a stroke and it was clear she was nearing the end of her life, her children called Tovah.

Tovah: And I just got in the car and got to her place in two hours and spent at least an hour with her, and I sang [sings] Mi shebeirach avoteinu.  I sang the Mi Shebeirach to her. I said the Yivarechecha to bless her, and then Miriam said, “Please sing from Funny Girl.” So I sang, [sings] "Who taught her everything she knows?I taught her everything she knows. And I sang the whole thing for her. And I finished, and she could not speak. I finished, and she said [with accent] “Tovah Feldshuh- bravo!” Just like that. Just clear as day. It was so encouraging that it broke through the barrier of not being able to articulate. 

And so it ended. She ended with holding the hands of her children, which was so great. It was a privilege that she could not enjoy with her own grandmother and her own parents. She couldn't hold their hands as they died, and I guess that is why she was destined to live.

[clip from Becoming Dr Ruth plays]

Feldshuh as Dr. Ruth: There is this phrase in Hebrew, tikkun olam. It means to heal. To heal the world. Now, I never thought it would be through sex therapy, but this is my way. And it is my obligation. Because you see, I survived. And one million five hundred thousand children did not.

Jen: Is there anything else you want to share about things you learned from her or what you'll remember most or?

Tovah: I would say… stick your neck out, do your best, assume or presume nothing. When you get hurt, nothing is personal. If people could do better, they would. She has a collection of turtles—she had probably close, honestly, to a thousand turtles in her apartment. Beautiful things, you know, crystal and one made of precious jewels—some extraordinary turtles. And the idea is that turtles have a shell, but they can't get anywhere without sticking their neck out. And that was one of her theme songs: to stick your neck out and walk forward in life.  Give part of yourself to the world. Leave the world a better place for having lived. Leave the world a better place.

[radio clip plays]

Dr. Ruth: This is Doctor Ruth Westheimer, we are here on 97 WYNY FM Radio, you are on the air.

Caller: Yeah, my name is Danny.

Dr. Ruth: Yes, Danny?

Caller: From Staten Island.

Dr. Ruth: Yes?

Caller: And I have a problem here. 

Dr. Ruth: Alright. 

Caller: My girlfriend, she has an uncontrollable sense of laughter. She becomes highly sensitive to the touch when she reaches orgasm.

Dr. Ruth: Mm hm. 

Caller: I’d like to know if there’s some physical or psychological reason for this, or if there’s something wrong with me.

Dr. Ruth: First of all, there is nothing wrong with that. I hear that very often. And what you could do is just laugh with her. 

Caller: Laugh with her?

Dr. Ruth: Absolutely! Try that. Next time she laughs, you just laugh with her. 

Caller: I see.

Dr. Ruth: Because if you laugh with her, you don’t have so much time to think about her laughing, and… and it might be very enjoyable, two people laughing with each other!

[theme music plays]

Jen: Dr. Ruth Westheimer died on July 12, 2024, at the age of 96. May her memory be a blessing.

You can learn more about Dr. Ruth's life and work in the Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women at jwa.org/encyclopedia. If you want to know more about the history of sex and sexuality in America, check out Rebecca Davis's brand new book: Fierce Desires.

You can see Tovah Feldshuh in Becoming Dr. Ruth on YouTube. The documentary Ask Dr. Ruth is streaming on Hulu.

Thank you for joining us for Can We Talk?, the podcast of the Jewish Women’s Archive. Our team includes Nahanni Rous and Judith Rosenbaum. Our theme music is by Girls in Trouble.

Want to be the first to get podcast news? Sign up for our newsletter at jwa.org/signup. You can listen to Can We Talk? at jwa.org/canwetalk, or wherever you get your podcasts. And you can help spread the word about the podcast by leaving us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts.

I'm Jen Richler. Until next time.