Dr. Ruth Westheimer, 1945. Holocaust survivor, sex therapist, Haganah member. Still going at 94yo
Despite being only 4 feet 7 inches (1.39 m) tall and 17 years of age, she joined the
Haganah, and was trained as a sniper, but never actually fought. On her 20th birthday, Westheimer was seriously wounded in action by an exploding shell during a
mortar fire attack on Jerusalem during the
1947–1949 Palestine war, and almost lost both of her feet.
Westheimer's media career began in 1980 with the radio call-in show
Sexually Speaking, which continued until 1990. In 1983 it was the top-rated radio show in the area, in the country's largest radio market. She then launched a television show,
The Dr. Ruth Show, which by 1985 attracted 2 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"
Westheimer still lives in the cluttered three-bedroom apartment on 190th Street "in Washington Heights where she raised her two children and became famous, in that order." She has stayed there, she said in 1995, to be near the two
synagogues of which she is a member (one of which is the
Reform synagogue the
Hebrew Tabernacle Congregation of Washington Heights, and the other of which is
Conservative Synagogue Adath Israel of Riverdale; she used to also be a member of the
Orthodox synagogue Ohav Shalom until it closed), the
YMHA of Washington Heights and
Inwood of which she was president for 11 years, and a "still sizable community of German Jewish World War II refugees." She explained: "Because of my experience with the Holocaust, I don't like to lose friends."
