Ruth , was a German and American sex therapist and talk show host. Westheimer was born in Germany to a Jewish family. As the Nazis came to power, her parents sent the year-old girl to a school in Switzerland for safety while they remained behind because of her elderly grandmother. At 4 feet 7 inches cm tall and 17 years of age, she joined the Haganah , and was trained as a sniper.
Two years later, Westheimer moved to Paris, France, where she studied psychology at the Sorbonne. Immigrating to the United States in , she worked as a maid to put herself through graduate school, earned a Master of Arts in sociology from The New School in , and earned a doctorate at age 42 from Teachers College, Columbia University , in Over the next decade, she taught at a number of universities and had a private sex therapy practice.
Westheimer's media career began in with the radio call-in show Sexually Speaking , which continued until In it was the top-rated radio show in the country's largest radio market. She then launched a television show, The Dr. Ruth Show , which by attracted two million viewers a week.
She became known for giving serious advice while being candid, but also warm, cheerful, funny, and respectful, and for her tag phrase: "Get some". In The New York Times noted that she had risen "from obscurity to almost instant stardom. She was the author of 45 books on sex and sexuality. The one-woman play Becoming Dr. Ruth , written by Mark St. Germain , is about Westheimer's life, as is the documentary, Ask Dr.
Ruth , directed by Ryan White. I come from Nazi Germany. And the one thing I've learned is that you must stand up for what you believe. Her father, 38 years old at the time, was taken away by the Nazis , who sent him to the Dachau concentration camp a week after Kristallnacht , the "Night of Broken Glass", when Nazis burned down 10, Jewish stores as well as Jewish homes and synagogues, in November Westheimer's mother and grandmother decided that Nazi Germany was too dangerous for her, due to the growing Nazi violence.
