46 Facts About Ruth Westheimer

Two years later, Westheimer moved to Paris, France, where she studied psychology at the Sorbonne.

Ruth Westheimer then launched a television show, The Dr Ruth Show, which by 1985 attracted two million viewers a week.

Ruth Westheimer became known for giving serious advice while being candid, but warm, cheerful, funny, and respectful, and for her tag phrase: "Get some".

Ruth Westheimer became a household name and major cultural figure, appeared on several network TV shows, co-starred in a movie with Gerard Depardieu, appeared on the cover of People, sang on a Tom Chapin album, appeared in several commercials, and hosted Playboy videos.

Ruth Westheimer was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame, and awarded the Magnus Hirschfeld Medal, the Ellis Island Medal of Honor, the Leo Baeck Medal, the Planned Parenthood Margaret Sanger Award, and the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.

Ruth Westheimer was the only child of Orthodox Jews, Irma, a housekeeper, and Julius Siegel, a notions wholesaler and son of the family for whom Irma worked.

Ruth Westheimer was given an early grounding in Judaism by her father, who took her regularly to the synagogue in the Nordend district of Frankfurt, where they lived.

Ruth Westheimer arrived at an orphanage of a Jewish charity in Heiden, Switzerland, as one of 300 Jewish children, some as young as six years of age.

Ruth Westheimer then moved to Jerusalem in 1948 to study early childhood education.

Ruth Westheimer joined the Haganah Jewish Zionist underground paramilitary organization in Jerusalem.

In 1948, on her 20th birthday, Ruth Westheimer was seriously wounded in action by an exploding shell during a mortar fire attack on Jerusalem during the 1948 Palestine war; the explosion killed two girls who were right next to her.

In 1950, at the age of 22, Ruth Westheimer married and moved to France with her first husband, David Bar-Haim, an Israeli soldier who had been accepted to medical school in Paris.

Ruth Westheimer worked as a maid, initially for 75 cents an hour and later for one dollar an hour to put herself through graduate school.

Ruth Westheimer was a single mother, and an organization named Jewish Family Service paid for her then-three-year-old daughter to stay with a foster family during the day and go to a German Jewish Orthodox nursery school while Westheimer worked and went to classes at The New School.

Ruth Westheimer went on to work as a postdoctoral researcher at New York-Presbyterian Hospital.

Ruth Westheimer continued to work there as an adjunct associate professor for five years.

Ruth Westheimer stressed that: "anything that two consenting adults do in the privacy of their bedroom or kitchen floor is all right with me".

Ruth Westheimer went on to produce her radio show until 1990.

In 1984, Ruth Westheimer began hosting several television programs on the Lifetime TV network, and one in syndication.

In 1987, she began a separate half-hour syndicated series on many broadcast stations called Ask Dr Ruth Westheimer, which was co-hosted by Larry Angelo.

Ruth Westheimer backed out when she learned the character is a thief.

Ruth Westheimer appeared on a TV Guide cover in 1988.

Dr Ruth Westheimer returned to the Lifetime network in 1988 with The All New Dr Ruth Westheimer Show.

In 1990, Westheimer starred in an ABC sitcom pilot, Dr Ruth's House, which aired as a one-time special in June of that year.

Ruth Westheimer wrote a column distributed both nationally and internationally by the King Features Syndicate.

Ruth Westheimer appeared as herself in "Dr Ruth", a 1993 episode of the sci-fi drama series Quantum Leap.

Ruth Westheimer appeared on the BBC radio show Desert Island Discs in 1990; on The Arsenio Hall Show once in 1990, once in 1991, once in 1993, and once in 1994; on The Howard Stern Show once in 1991; on Late Night with Conan O'Brien once in 1994, twice in 1995, three times in 1996, and once in 1997; on The Daily Show once in 1998; and was featured in a Celebrity Deathmatch episode in 1999.

Ruth Westheimer appeared in several commercial advertisements, including a 1990 commercial for Clairol Herbal Essences shampoo and body wash, a 1991 Pepsi commercial, and a 1994 Honda Prelude ad.

On her 91st birthday, June 4,2019, Ruth Westheimer appeared as a guest on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, and she visited Ellen's show again in November 2019, taking questions from the audience, and was a guest in November 2020.

Ruth Westheimer delivered commencement speeches at the Hebrew Union College seminary, Lehman College of the City University of New York and, in 2004, at Trinity College, where she was awarded honorary degrees.

Ruth Westheimer was the guest speaker at the Bronx High School of Science in New York in commemoration of Yom HaShoah 2008.

Ruth Westheimer was the Executive Producer for PBS documentaries Surviving Salvation and No Missing Link, Shifting Sands: Bedouin Women at the Crossroads, and The Unknown Face of Islam.

Ruth Westheimer was a board member of the Museum of Jewish Heritage in Lower Manhattan in New York City.

In October 2013 the one-woman play Becoming Dr Ruth Westheimer, written by Mark St Germain and directed by Julianne Boyd and set in 1997, opened Off Broadway at the Westside Theatre.

In 2019, the documentary Ask Dr Ruth Westheimer directed by Ryan White was in theaters, and was made available on Hulu, as she approached her 90th birthday.

Ruth Westheimer said that seeing child refugees being separated from their parents upset her, because her own story was reflected in what they were going through.

Some time before 1983, Ruth Westheimer was made a non-physician Fellow of the New York Academy of Medicine.

In 2008, Ruth Westheimer's name was added to the Bronx Walk of Fame.

Ruth Westheimer was named 1983 Jewish Woman of Achievement by a consortium of organizations connected with the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies in New York, received the 1986 Mayor's Liberty Award from New York City Mayor Ed Koch, and was given the 1987 Motion Picture Theater Bookers Association Star of Tomorrow Award.

In 2023, Ruth Westheimer received the Women's Entrepreneurship Day Psychology Pioneer Award from the United Nations.

Ruth Westheimer was married three times, the first time to Israeli soldier and medical student David Bar-Heim for five years, and the second time briefly to Dan Bommer, with whom she had her daughter, Miriam, who later took the last name of her stepfather.

Ruth Westheimer said each of her marriages played an important role in her relationship advice, but after two divorces it was her third marriage, at age 32 to fellow Holocaust survivor Manfred 'Fred' Westheimer, that was the "real marriage".

Ruth Westheimer met Fred on a ski tow in the Catskills.

Ruth Westheimer had two children: Dr Miriam Yael Westheimer, an educator, author, and chief program officer of HIPPY International, which develops early childhood education and literacy programs, and who lived in Israel for six years and later married Joel Henry Einleger, and Joel Westheimer, a professor at the University of Ottawa; she had four grandchildren.

In December 2014, Ruth Westheimer was a guest at a wedding in the Bronx.

Ruth Westheimer died at her home in Manhattan on July 12,2024, at the age of 96.