Day: December 18, 2023

Do you remember Dr. Ruth? Did you know about her life story? Allison Gilbert’s deft portrait about Dr. Ruth Westheimer’s ongoing professional arc is an eye-opener and memorable read.

“…I still will talk about sexual dysfunction. But I have done that.” She had recently turned 95, and after a long and spirited career as America’s most famous and least likely sex counselor, she was driven by a new challenge…”

“Loneliness was on the rise before the pandemic but escalated because of lockdowns and social-distancing requirements.

And Dr. Westheimer felt the effects firsthand.

…Dr. Westheimer insists, however, there was at least one upside to her confinement. She was grounded long enough to recall having written in her childhood diary about feeling lonely. And she had the time to look for it.

She found it.

The diary, started in 1945 when she was 17 and written in her native German and sometimes in Hebrew, recounts in painful detail what it was like for her to grow up in a Swiss children’s home during World War II.

Before her explosive rise to stardom as America’s sex therapist in the 1980s, Dr. Westheimer was born Karola Ruth Siegel to an Orthodox Jewish couple in the German town of Wiesenfeld.

She was 10 years old when she was put on a train to Switzerland, part of the Kindertransport of Jewish children seeking refuge from the Nazis. It was Thursday, Jan. 5, 1939…”

Allison Gilbert. “Dr. Ruth Saved People’s Sex Lives. Now She Wants to Cure Loneliness.” New York Times. Nov. 9, 2023 with portrait images by Gabby Jones. (try article gift link here)