Sex for Dummies: Dr Ruth Westheimer 1928-2024

Not for sensitive readers

The phone rang, the German accented woman said, “I’ve just landed. I’m having a massage, come collect me in an hour.” “But you’ve just landed from a 16-hour flight from New York, don’t you want to sleep?” I protested. “Have a rest, I’ll collect you for dinner.” “Collect me in an hour,” said Dr Ruth, and the phone went dead.

As I walked into the Monarch Hotel in Rosebank, a diminutive 4 foot 7 inch (140cm) Holocaust survivor pranced out with sparkling eyes, followed by a 6 foot 4 inch rippling muscled black massage therapist who said to me, “I wish I had her energy.”

For the next week, the nearly 90-year-old would run me off my feet. Brunch at Moyo’s in Melrose Arch and a visit to Nelson Mandela’s home energised rather than tired her. When the others had left dinner at The Fishmonger, Dr Ruth asked me to take her to see African prostitutes. We were in the perfect area, up and down Rudd Road, Illovo. We drove and then past a hotel in Corlett Drive, which Patrick, my housekeeper, once informed me was a haven for sex workers.

Never have I met anyone with greater insight. Over the next week, I lapped up her wisdom. “Those girls want to marry the Prince of Monaco, but he’s not interested in them, they aren’t 18 anymore … People ask questions, the right answer is usually, ‘None of your business.’”

On the way into Soweto, a group of American tourists ran her off the road, so excited to meet the world’s most famous sex therapist and one of the most famous TV stars in America. At the Lion Park, Israeli tourists ignored the animals and wanted selfies with the diminutive superstar.

At our public event hosted by the South African Zionist Federation, she told me, “I don’t want to answer questions in public about ‘anal’, dis past niet [the Yiddish term for ‘it’s not appropriate’]”. But Dr Ruth wasn’t one to shy away from embarrassing questions. During a tour of the Lion Park, she peppered our guide, TikTok influencer Shandor Larenty, with questions about gay lions – which apparently occurs as a sign of dominance – and whether these lions ejaculated during gay sex, which a blushing Larenty informed her he had never checked.

Wherever we went, Dr Ruth had the same question, “Did you tip the parking attendant, if not for a twist of fate, that could have been me. Did you tip the toilet attendant because if not for a twist of fate, that could have been me.”

I sat down with Dr Ruth and asked her to tell me her story. I wanted to understand her twist of fate.

As a teenager in Germany, her parents witnessed the rise of Nazism, and put her on a Kindertransport to Switzerland. She never saw them again.

She spent her teenage years in a Swiss orphanage before making her way to the British Mandate for Palestine at the end of World War II. She joined the Haganah, the Israeli underground army, fighting for Israel’s independence from British colonialism and Arab attack. She became a sniper, and turned red when she told me that she lost her virginity on a kibbutz haystack with her rifle at her side. The poor guy must have been terrified. She told me she could dismantle and assemble a Sten gun with her eyes closed.

After having her legs shredded in a mortar attack on her birthday, during the last days of the war, she recovered, married, and moved to France. A few broken marriages later, she landed up in New York, where she saw a notice offering free education to Holocaust survivors. She got a job as a maid to put herself through a Master’s degree and then a Doctorate, becoming an unknown academic and sex therapist.

One day, the university department secretary walked into the staff lounge and informed all the academics that the Broadcast Association of America was having a conference and wanted a speaker to talk about why sex was an inappropriate topic for radio and TV. All the professors questioned how much the talk would pay, and on learning that there was no stipend, they all refused. Ruth Westheimer said yes.

After her talk on the inappropriateness of speaking about sex on radio, a radio executive approached Dr Ruth and asked her to try a radio show, at midnight on a Sunday evening for 15 minutes on radio station WYNY. The show, Sexually Speaking, lasted for 10 years, and became an hour-long live call-in radio talk show. Within three years, it had become the most popular radio show in America and soon morphed into the Dr Ruth TV Show, which attracted two million viewers each week. In the days before Oprah Winfrey, Dr Ruth became one of the most famous faces in America. She wrote 35 books about sex including Sex for Dummies.

If not for a twist of fate, Dr Ruth could have been the parking attendant or the toilet cleaner. Kismet or fate or destiny or the will of G-d?

But in spite of it all, Dr Ruth never felt completely comfortable in her role, and she would never allow her husband, Manfred Westheimer, to come to her talks – “dis past niet”. But one day, she told me, she made an exception. Dianne Sawyer of American television show 60 Minutes wanted to film Dr Ruth in her home, she knew Manfred had always had a crush on Sawyer, so she agreed that, on this one occasion, he could stay. Sawyer arrived, her crew set up cameras in the lounge and asked for a visual of Dr Ruth and her husband on the couch together. Suddenly Sawyer asked, “So tell me Mr Westheimer, how’s your sex life?” Not missing a beat, Dr Ruth’s husband turned to Sawyer and said, “The cobbler’s children have no shoes!”

After leaving South Africa, Dr Ruth travelled to Israel and insisted that she wanted to meet my parents who were on holiday in Tel Aviv. She arrived bearing gifts, at their hotel, to thank them for my hospitality in Johannesburg. Thereafter, Dr Ruth met her children in Switzerland for their annual hike through the Swiss Alps.

Dr Ruth, my friend, passed away on Friday in New York aged 96, after a remarkable life.

• Howard Sackstein is chairperson of the SA Jewish Report and a public speaker who often talks about the life lessons taught to him by Dr Ruth. He writes in his personal capacity.