Text copyright © 2015 Dr. Ruth K. Westheimer and Pierre A. Lehu All rights reserved.
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ISBN-10: 1477829601 (hardcover) ISBN-13: 9781477829608 (hardcover) ISBN-10: 1477828362 (paperback) ISBN-13: 9781477828366 (paperback) eISBN: 9781477878361
Cover design by Laura Klynstra
Library of Congress Control Number: 2014920789
To all those seeking more joie de vivre in their life
CONTENTS
START READING
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER I What Is Joie de Vivre?
CHAPTER II Always Move Forward
CHAPTER III Embrace Your Passions and Your Beliefs
CHAPTER IV Open Yourself Up to Love: My History in Love and Marriage
CHAPTER V Going After What You Want in Life
CHAPTER VI Enjoy the Crazy Turns Life Takes
CHAPTER VII How Celebrity Influenced My Life—and Could Influence Yours
CHAPTER VIII Always Learn New Things
CHAPTER IX Take Risks
CHAPTER X Recognize That It Is Never Too Late
EPILOGUE Questions from the Audience
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Two are better than one because there is a good reward for their labor.
– Kohelet Ecclesiastes 4:9
PROLOGUE
The BBC assembled a series of documentaries called Extraordinary Women that recently aired around the world, including on many PBS stations in the United States. Each was an hour long, and among the featured women were Indira Gandhi, Grace Kelly, Coco Chanel, Agatha Christie, Audrey Hepburn, Josephine Baker, and me, Dr. Ruth Westheimer. I was very honored to have been included, especially because I was the only one who was still alive. I don’t know the particulars of why they chose me, but I guess my life story is one that is rather dramatic, as it’s been quite a roller coaster ride: growing up in an Orthodox Jewish family in Frankfurt, Germany, until the age of ten; being put on a kindertransport to an orphanage in Switzerland to escape the Holocaust; immigrating at the age of seventeen to Palestine, where I worked on a kibbutz before joining the Haganah, the freedom fighters who trained me to be a sniper; being seriously wounded in a bomb blast on my twentieth birthday; living in Paris for five years; moving to the United States; and then in my fifties unexpectedly winding up as a world-famous sex therapist.
If the selection process of the series Extraordinary Women remains a mystery, I know exactly how the play about my life, Becoming Dr. Ruth, came to be written. It all started with an off-Broadway show entitled Freud’s Last Session. I went backstage and met the actors, including Martin Rayner, who starred as Freud. Later, he called me and asked for a meeting in my office. I wondered if he had a sex problem he wanted some assistance with, but I so enjoyed his performance that I would gladly have tried to help him in any way I could, so we set up the appointment. He came to my office, we chatted a bit, and then he brought up the topic that he’d actually come to see me about.
“Dr. Ruth, you haven’t met the playwright of Freud, Mark St. Germain, but he’s a big fan of yours and he’d like to write a play about your life.”
“Martin,” I said kindly, “I love the theater, and while it’s an interesting proposition, there have already been several documentaries made about my life. So that ground has been covered, and I don’t really see this as a viable proposition.”
“But, Dr. Ruth,” said Martin, playing the role of supplicant almost as well as he did Freud on stage, “Mark is such a talented writer that I’m sure he’d find facets to explore that would be illuminating to audiences.”
But delving into the fascinating aspects of my life—such as how it felt to lose my parents or, given my career, revealing the private moments of my sex life—was exactly what I feared. I didn’t want Martin to think I’d made a snap judgment after he went to the effort of coming to see me, so I told him I’d think about it. Of course, I didn’t have to think about it very much because my mind had pretty much been made up the second I heard the offer. I’d told Martin to have Mark call my minister of communications (and coauthor of this book), Pierre Lehu, and I had Pierre deliver the bad news. Mark then called me, getting my answering machine; he left such a sensitive and sensible message about how much he admired me and that he would never go forward with such a project without my cooperation that almost as fast as I made up my mind when hearing about the idea, I did an about-face and called him back and suggested we meet. We had lunch at Mr. K’s, a Chinese restaurant I often go to since it’s near my office. In addition to the proximity it offers me, the tables are set far apart so you can have a business lunch while maintaining some privacy. And they have a pair of chopsticks with my name in gold letters!
“Mark,” I began, after we’d made some small talk, “I know people are interested in my life history, but I’ve told those stories over and over.”
“But, Dr. Ruth, most people don’t know that you were orphaned by the Holocaust or that you were a sniper who fought to create Israel.” Mark had done his research, so he knew the basic outlines of my life.
“Perhaps, but there are documentaries that they can watch, or they can look me up on Google if they’re really curious.”
“What a theatrical piece can do is not only educate people about your history but also bring you, the Dr. Ruth of today, to life. There’ll be an actress—I already have somebody in mind—who will portray you, as you are, not just offer up stories about your past.”
“And what if I don’t like the Dr. Ruth she offers audiences?”
Mark put on his most sincere demeanor—and with his white beard and round face he already projected an honest appearance—and said, “You’ll have full approval of the script. If there’s anything you don’t like, I’ll change it. And if you don’t like the whole thing, we won’t do it. But I have a feeling that you will.”
Since the play has already been produced in New York City as well as in the Berkshires, Hartford, Fort Lauderdale and other cities, you know that in the end I agreed. So what got me to change my mind? I’ve had a very full life, but because there’s so much to depict and yet so little material from my past that exists, it’s very difficult to show the real me in a documentary. Audiences get a glimpse into my past, and the producers show a lot of stock footage of World War II and Nazis saluting Hitler, and so on. But those early years live only in my memories; there’s little to actually show on the screen. In a theatrical production, though, the playwright is free to do as he pleases. He can go back and forth through time so that the audience gets a sense of who I am now, not just who I was back then, and how my past molded the current me. It’s that aspect of a theatrical production—at least, one written by as talented a playwright as Mark St. Germain—that made it so enjoyable not only for theater audiences but also for me, which is why I went to see it again and again. I would sit on the edge of my chair watching Debra Jo Rupp. Even though I knew the story better than she did, the way the play jumped back and forth from the past to the play’s present kept me riveted.
The first word of the play is “Pierre,” as “I’m” on the phone with him. So there’s a plot taking place in real time while the actress playing me talks about my life. Debra Jo Rupp, who was the first to portray me and was in the off-Broadway production, did a great job, and we’ve since become good friends. However, as the play goes to some regiona
l theaters, other actresses will take on this role—and if I can go see them, I will, because I’m very curious to see the differences between them and Debra Jo.
I also enjoy taking part in the overall show by doing what are called Talk Backs after some performances. (I’d done one of those with the cast of Freud, and another time I interviewed Martin Rayner answering my questions while he was in character, which we videotaped. You can see it on my YouTube channel.) I love to answer questions from the audience. In these Talk Backs, since the audience has just seen the show and they have a good idea about my life, the questions they ask often manage to surprise me. As you might imagine, sometimes they’re not about my life or the play at all, but about that other subject that I specialize in: sex and relationships.
During Talk Backs and in interviews with journalists and the general public, I often get asked: Where do you get your joie de vivre? People who learn about my life wonder how I can have so much positive energy. They see that I always appear to be having a good time, and they want to know my secret formula. Of course, there’s no one pat answer. I’m not like Popeye the Sailor, opening a can of spinach and ready to take on the world—or at least Bluto. However, it’s not accidental. I do make a point of looking on the bright side, and by the time you’ve finished reading this book, I hope that you’ll have some idea of how to get more joy out of your own life. There’s no one piece of advice that works for everybody, but I believe life is a little bit like meal preparation. If you take a few ingredients and combine them the right way, you can create something delicious. Two different chefs will come up with slightly different variations, even with the same ingredients; but as long as the end result is pleasing, it doesn’t matter. So in each chapter I’ll give you some ingredients to try out. Your life won’t come out like mine, but maybe you can infuse your life with a little of the je ne sais pas quoi that made me go from Karola Ruth Siegel to the one and only Dr. Ruth.
CHAPTER I
What Is Joie de Vivre?
Many moons ago, I lived in Paris for five years. I arrived in Paris a new bride with no knowledge of French, but I left with my second husband (to-be, anyway) speaking French rather well. In French, as in any language, there are phrases that have a special meaning that perhaps can’t be perfectly translated (but I will try). Joie de vivre literally means “joy of life,” but what it really describes are those times when you just feel very alive, your emotions are bursting forth, and you want to skip down the street. It’s something you see in little children who squeal with delight at certain times. As adults we learn to squelch those squeals, to hide our emotions, to make every day pretty much the same as the day before. We go through life with our “game face” on, not letting others see the emotions inside of us. The terrible side effect of that is that we are stifling our joie de vivre.
What makes us act that way? Why are we afraid to be joyous? The answer is that it’s not so much joy that frightens us but the other emotions, such as sadness and anger. We all have some terrible stories in our past, and in order to keep them buried, we end up stifling all our emotions. And I plead guilty for having done that, though I also had some excuses, as the worst events in my life were truly horrific. The worst one occurred when I was only ten years old.
As a child in Frankfurt I grew up in an Orthodox home. That means we were a bit more stringent in following the religious laws than non-Orthodox Jews, keeping a strictly kosher household, not working on the Sabbath, and going to an Orthodox temple where the men and women prayed in separate sections. Starting around the age of eight, every Friday night I would accompany my father to temple. I don’t want to claim any particular religious dedication at that age. I did love being with my father, though, especially because on the way he would buy me ice cream. It had to be before sundown—once the Sabbath began, he couldn’t spend any money, so I was like his alarm clock, making sure that we left early enough to make the ice cream stop.
It was unusual for a girl to be sitting next to her father on a Friday night at temple. Such treatment was normally reserved for boys, but as I was an only child, I was allowed to fulfill some of the roles of a son. It’s also why I was sent to the Samson Raphael Hirsch School. This was a girl’s school, for no Orthodox schools in Germany could be coed, but it was a much-better-thought-of school than the one closer to me. In fact, among my classmates was a Rothschild who was brought to school by a nanny and lived in an enormous mansion. This school was the largest Jewish school in Frankfurt. Most Jewish children went to a Jewish school, in part because Jewish children in public schools were often taunted by young ruffians but also because of the desire to promote Judaism among Jewish children.
While I don’t have any memories of being threatened in any way going to and from school, I know that many students were harassed, especially the boys, by groups of young German thugs. Anti-Semitism in Germany was a thread that grew thicker or thinner over hundreds of years of history but never completely snapped, which is one reason that Hitler was able to launch the campaign against Jews so easily. Of course after November 9, 1938, Kristallnacht—or Night of Broken Glass—any semblance of normalcy with regards to the Jews of Frankfurt was destroyed. My school was shut and our synagogue burned down. When Hitler first came to power, my parents had tried to keep their fears from me; now that was impossible. From that night on, I slept in my parents’ bed because I didn’t want to sleep alone.
My parents put up a brave front—perhaps too brave. Only a week later, on November 15, I was walking with my father on the street in front of our house when a neighbor gave him a stern warning.
“Julius, you must leave Germany as soon as possible, tonight if you can. Things are going to get very bad.”
“We might have to leave one day,” my father replied, “but tomorrow is a Christian holiday and so for sure we will be safe.” But that next morning, two SS storm troopers in their long coats and polished black boots came to our apartment and took my father away.
I have two vivid memories of that morning. First, my grandmother removed some silver coins she had sewn into the hem of her skirt, gave them to one of the SS, and told him to take good care of her son. A lot of good that must have done. And then I rushed to the window and saw my father climb into a truck. I don’t know whether or not he could see me, but he looked up toward our windows and smiled, as if to say, “Don’t worry, everything will be all right.” That was the last time I saw him.
As it turned out, his misfortune was my good fortune. He wasn’t taken to a concentration camp; those hadn’t been opened yet. He was taken to a detention camp, and eventually he would be sent back, only to perish in a concentration camp later on, along with my mother, paternal grandmother, and maternal grandparents. But because he had been taken away, I became eligible to leave the country. There were kindertransports, trains set up to take some German Jewish children out of Germany. In order to get on the list, one of the qualifications was that at least one of your parents had to have been taken away by the Nazis. Thus, because of my father, my mother and grandmother had gotten me a seat on one of those trains bound for Switzerland.
My last memory of my mother and my grandmother is of them running alongside the train I was on as it left the station, waving good-bye. Imitating my father, I gave them a smile, but inside I felt so very lonely and afraid, and once the train pulled out of the station, tears started to stream down my face. I was ten years old, going off to who knows where with one little suitcase and a doll. The doll was my favorite, a celluloid doll. The brand name was Schildkröte, and it bore the company’s unusual trademark on the back that looked like a toad. Sitting across from me was a younger little girl of about five or six who also had tears streaming down her face. She had blond hair and was wearing a little blue dress with white stockings and shiny black shoes, as if she were going to a party. My mother and grandmother had dressed me more sensibly so that I was wearing walking shoes and thick wool socks, as they knew it would be cold up in the mountains where we were headed. S
eeing this younger child—who seemed even more vulnerable than me—cry her eyes out changed my attitude. I suddenly grew more concerned for her than for myself. In a moment of generosity (that I readily admit later regretting), I gave her my doll. At first she looked puzzled, but when I insisted that it was now hers, her face lit up with a smile. And at that moment I understood the meaning of the concept of tzedakah in Judaism, “giving,” which I’d heard spoken about so often in temple. I had given my doll away, but the sense of satisfaction I received from the change in the little girl’s face was definitely a reward, and one that I felt counted with God as well.
The impression most people have of me is of this little woman who talks about sex in a funny accent. Some people have an inkling of my past, and some, especially Jews, even know a fair amount about my childhood. But when they see me, they tend to light up with a smile because they know that when Dr. Ruth is in the house, they’re going to be tickled by my frank talk and maybe even have a few good laughs. But the question is, how can my head be filled with such sad memories and yet I am still able to make people laugh? It’s not always easy, but the secret is to compartmentalize the various sections of your brain. I can put aside the sad memories when I have to, but they’re always lurking around somewhere, and sometimes they pop up when I least expect it. The more you practice, the easier it becomes. But to allow the joy to come front and center in your life, you also have to feel your emotions, even the sad ones. You have to mourn, let the tears pour out. If you bottle the sadness in, the joy gets bottled right along with it.
When it comes to having lost my entire family to the Holocaust, one of the most difficult aspects of it for me was that it seemed to take place in slow motion. For a long time I received letters from my family, and I had no idea what fate awaited them. I was betwixt and between, on the one hand believing that we would all be reunited but also fearing that we might not. So I had hope, even though in actuality there was no hope. And then the letters stopped coming. Again, there was no warning. It wasn’t as if I got a letter saying there wouldn’t be any more posts. No, instead the time between that last letter and the next one that never came just stretched out more and more. As far as I was concerned, the next one was still on its way, and I kept writing letters to them. Why I wasn’t getting any answers to my letters was a mystery—what child could have imagined the horrible truth? (In fact, before the Holocaust, I’m not sure many adults could have imagined what the Nazis were doing.) Since I didn’t know what had happened, I couldn’t really let go. I was in a sort of limbo, an orphan who didn’t quite believe my status. And not wanting to believe the truth also clouded my future. That impression—that my parents might one day just show up—haunts me still. It’s not a feeling I will ever lose. And yet . . . I haven’t clouded my life with this darkness. How do I manage such emotional upheaval with joie de vivre? And how can you do the same with whatever terrible events fill your memory banks?
The Doctor Is In Page 1