One of the centers of cultural life was and continues to be the YMHA of Washington Heights and Inwood. My husband, Fred, and I were members, and my two children spent many hours there. I was elected to the board and eventually was elected president, an office that I ended up holding for eleven years. And I’m proud to say that as president I never missed a meeting, though to be honest I did have to move some around so that I could maintain my perfect attendance record.
If you read the last paragraph quickly, you may not have paid much attention to those four initials, YMHA. Most people see that and think Young Men’s Christian Association, but in this case and throughout New York City, many Y’s substitute “Hebrew” for “Christian,” as they are Jewish organizations. Nicknamed “schul with a pool,” they serve to bind young Jews together. Individual temples may have a particular cohesion, either in their form (Judaism, Orthodox, Conservative, or Reform), or the background of their congregation (such as the German Jews of Washington Heights). But the Y could serve as a community center where all Jews could work together. And it was that aspect that drew my late husband and me to our Y.
To paraphrase what I said earlier, I never went Hollywood. I never even moved to Midtown Manhattan. But being a celebrity and living in Washington Heights has at times caused some clashes with my two lives, though as far as I’m concerned, so be it. For my seventy-fifth birthday bash, we decided to hold it at my Y. Most Y’s aren’t fancy establishments. They have a bit of a school-gym atmosphere, and my Y is no different. Where I live is very nice and safe. But lower Washington Heights is the type of neighborhood that many people shy away from, and though it’s improved, they’re not entirely wrong to do so. So luring some fancy people up to my Y took some doing. It didn’t help that it poured that night, buckets and buckets, so that cabs were hard to find.
But I never let little things like a flooded kitchen bother me. (Yes, it rained so much that the Y’s kitchen flooded.) I always do my best to have a good time, so while the guests were still coming in the main entrance dripping wet, I was off in the room where the band was playing, dancing with my good friend Malcolm Thomson. I may not be able to warble well, but I can cut the rug, as they say, and Malcolm and I were really swinging when Pierre came up to me with his cell phone held out and screamed, over the music, “You have a phone call.”
I’m in the middle of a dance at my seventy-fifth birthday party and he expects me to take a phone call? Was it some press person wanting a quote? It could wait. I shooed Pierre away. But rather than listen, he kept waving me toward the exit. I circled the room in Malcolm’s arms, but Pierre was still there as Malcolm and I came around—and he cut in in order to get me to stop dancing. I was furious, ready to blow the proverbial gasket. Then Pierre said, “It’s President Clinton.” Clinton was no longer president, but he was a favorite of mine. His offices were on 125th Street up in Harlem—not that far from where we were and Pierre had been working hard to get him to drop in—and for a while it looked as if he would, but as a next-best-thing he’d called to wish me a happy birthday. For that call it was worth suffering some dansus interruptus!
Mayor Dinkins did make it and spoke eloquently, and Arnold Schwarzenegger sent a bouquet of balloons. My rabbi sang in French, the Yale cellist Inbal Megiddo played beautifully, and somehow the Y’s executive director and my very good friend, Marty Englisher, managed to get a meal served despite the rising water in the kitchen.
One of the great benefits of surrounding yourself with joie de vivre is that you tend to attract people to your side. People want to be around you because they get to share in some of your positive energy. You don’t have to become best friends with all of them, but having a circle of friends who support you is worth having. And one benefit of making yourself the life of the party is that wherever you go, a party seems to appear!
You may have noticed I called the Washington Heights Y “my Y.” Additionally I call the Museum of Jewish Heritage—A Living Memorial to the Holocaust, “my” museum, as I sit on the board. Most of the other board members have given huge amounts of money, so would be in a better position to call it their museum, but as I’m the only board member who is actually an orphan of the Holocaust, I say I get to claim it.
I am very proud to sit on this board, and the reason is quite sad. Nobody has to like anyone else, and if some people want to hate the Jews, for whatever reason, that’s their business. But no matter what you think of us, facts are facts: the Holocaust happened and six million Jews were murdered, my family members among them. Holocaust deniers are truly despicable people, spreading their lies when real people who suffered and died deserve to be honored, not slandered. I suppose the deniers think that all Jews do nothing but try to get ahead based on the fact that we were almost annihilated. All the Nobel prizes and other awards that Jews around the world have won were given out of sympathy? That Israel is thriving while the countries around it are languishing simply because the world feels sorry for Jews? This is nonsense. But if lies get told enough times, people believe them, and so we need institutions like my museum to counter those lies with the truth.
Jews are not perfect. Nobody is perfect but God. There are bad people of every religion, as well as among atheists, and there are good ones. But it seems that Jews are always having to prove to the rest of the world that we’re not bad. And so to play a role in an institution such as the Museum of Jewish Heritage is a continuation of the fight I joined when I became a member of the Haganah. Every time I generate some media attention for the museum that brings more people through the door, it’s as if I’d fired those bullets into a bull’s-eye, and that makes me very happy.
What doesn’t make me happy is that our board meetings are held early in the morning. I normally don’t get up until 9:00 a.m., and so to be all the way down at Battery Park by 8:30 is a sacrifice, though where we meet is gorgeous. The museum sits at the end of Manhattan on the Hudson River. The architects did a terrific job (in more ways than just the beauty of the design, as none of the rising waters caused by Hurricane Sandy breached the building’s defenses.) Our boardroom is on the top floor, and it has glass walls in a V shape so that you look out on the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, and all of New York Harbor. I have to confess that when the meeting turns to the nitty-gritty details, my attention is often more focused on the boats going to and fro than the budgetary numbers being thrown at us. I rely on my friends on the board—especially attorney Jeff Tabak, who reads every word—to guide me when it comes time to vote.
When I first joined the board, there was an exhibition that meant a lot to me. It featured Jewish soldiers in the American Army during World War II. And among the photos on the wall was one of my Fred Westheimer (and here I can truly use the word “my”!). Fred was a German Jew like me, but his family had escaped to Portugal in 1938—they were smart enough to see what was coming. Then Freddy came to the States, where he joined the US Army to fight Hitler. It made me proud to see Freddy’s photo on the walls of the museum, and I was sad when the exhibit was changed. By that point, Fred had passed away, and whenever I went there, I had made sure to visit him.
I think it’s worth repeating here that feelings of sadness—and I felt sad when I went to look at Fred’s photo as a handsome soldier—are a part of joie de vivre. Feeling the full range of emotions is a part of life. No one likes to feel sad, but assuming you’re not clinically depressed, feeling sad from time to time is better than not feeling any emotions at all. And if you stifle your sadness, there’s a good chance that you’ll feel another emotion, guilt. Better to remember that person you lost for a few moments, be a little down and perhaps even cry a bit, but then shake those feelings off and the next time there’s cause for celebration, be able to engage guilt-free.
Jews are “known” for not having sex. That’s a myth put out there by Jewish comedians who have discovered that they can get an easy laugh by complaining that their wives always seems to get headaches when the subject of sex is brought up. But the Jewish relig
ion is very specific about the importance of sex. Not only is it a religious duty for a husband and wife to engage in sexual relations, but he must make sure that she is pleased—that is to say, has an orgasm. I wrote a whole book on this subject, Heavenly Sex: Sex in the Jewish Tradition (with Jonathan Mark of Jewish Week), so I’m not going to repeat myself here.
But despite being Jewish, despite having lost my family to the Nazis and having fought for Israel’s independence, in the course of my career as Dr. Ruth, the only time I ran into protests about what I do was from my fellow Jews. It was 1982, and my radio show was just starting to take off. I was invited to give a lecture at a Jewish center in Rego Park, Queens, a place not thought of as a hotbed of conservatism. But it seems a small group of Orthodox thought that my appearing in this Jewish center was somehow offensive, and they made threats that they were going to demonstrate. If that were to happen today, I would just have canceled. Who needs that sort of aggravation? But back then, I didn’t want to allow anyone to force me to back down from what I believed in. I knew that what I planned to say that evening was not anything shocking but actually a part of Torah, what the Jewish law says to do. It was the middle of June, and the week before I’d been out in LA to do The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. Perhaps that type of national attention was what drew the protestors; I don’t know. What I do know was that on the way out there, I was nervous. I’d had a talk with the director earlier that day.
“Dr. Ruth, I don’t want to make you worried, but we’ve been told there are going to be demonstrators tonight.”
For someone who’d been through Kristallnacht, the idea of demonstrators was actually a bit terrifying, even if I was told they were fellow Jews.
“Are you sure you can guarantee my safety?” I demanded.
“Yes, yes, I’ve been in touch with the local police captain, and he said that he’ll maintain control.”
Back in Germany, the police had looked on while ruffians beat up on Jews, and then they’d walked away. But I had a good relationship with the police department in New York. Every year my Y threw a breakfast for the local police precinct, and after I’d become famous, all the cops at the breakfast wanted my autograph so that they could show their wives. So part of me felt confident that I’d make it through the evening unscathed, and part of me felt very nervous, especially if this demonstration drew a lot of press coverage. A car was sent to get me. I sat very quietly in the back, which is not my style; normally I ask the driver all about himself. But on this evening I preferred to keep silent. I needed to gather myself so that when we arrived, if conditions were really out of control, I would have either the courage to be able to push through the demonstrators or the guts to say enough is enough and order the driver to turn around and get me home.
As we approached the Jewish center, I could see the police presence. There were at least fifty policemen in front of the building—some in riot gear—and there were a dozen police cars parked this way and that, blocking traffic. What I couldn’t see were the demonstrators. We pulled up to the entrance; a big, burly policeman opened the door for me; and as I got out of the car, I could hear some shouting. Altogether there were eight demonstrators, who’d been penned behind some police barriers across the street. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, and I didn’t try to pick out their words as I walked quickly through the doors. I was relieved that the demonstration was minor, and very grateful for the show of support by the NYPD. And so in all these years of giving hundreds of lectures all around the world, that is really the only time that I was heckled in any way—and it was at the hands of my fellow Jews. Oy!
What was unfair about having those demonstrators at that event is that I am always so careful not to offend the Jewish community. When I speak to a Jewish group, I know that what I am saying is 100 percent appropriate for adults. (I never allow anyone under eighteen at my lectures when speaking to adults because I want to be able to give the audience permission to have good sex, a permission I wouldn’t grant teens. At the same time, I also don’t let adults in to my lectures when I am speaking to teens, as I know that it will make the teens feel uncomfortable and be less open to me. Both positions sometimes get some pushback, but I always stick to my guns.) For example, if I am asked to address a group on a Friday night and suspect that many in the potential audience might be Jews, I won’t accept the date. I don’t do this because of my religious objections to working on a Friday night but because it would exclude those Jews who wouldn’t go to the event, and that would be insulting to them on my part.
Another example is the time I was asked to decorate a Christmas tree for a charity fund-raiser. Various celebrities were decorating trees near the holidays that would be auctioned off to raise money for the charity. It’s something I wanted to do, but I wasn’t going to decorate a Christmas tree. I came up with a compromise. Instead of calling my tree a Christmas tree, we called it a Hanukkah bush—I used little dreidels and other Jewish symbols in the decorating process. And the big winner was the charity, because a gentleman who became a friend of mine, David Mitchell, bid $10,000 for my tree, and then he bid an additional $10,000 so that another had to be made. Wow.
By the way, just because I wouldn’t decorate a Christmas tree doesn’t mean that I don’t get along with Christians, including members of the Catholic clergy. I was once dining at the Four Seasons restaurant when I noticed that there was a group dining in a private dining area. I didn’t know who was in that room, but I’m not shy and I’m always curious, so I peeked inside. It was all priests and nuns, and they greeted me with enthusiasm and insisted I come in to say hello to them all. And despite my stand in favor of the right to abortion, even New York’s Cardinal Dolan seems to be a fan. Before the Steuben Parade (the German American parade I was made grand marshal of, which I mentioned earlier), Mass was celebrated in St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Of course I attended and was seated in the first row, both because I was an honored guest and also because I always make sure I’m in the first row so that I can see what’s going on. After the cardinal said the Mass, he came over to greet all the dignitaries. When he came to me, he gave me a big smile and a kiss on the cheek while I put my hand on his cheek. So this little Jew gets around!
I mentioned earlier that Jews are actually instructed to have satisfying sex—that is to say, sex where both partners reach orgasm. This certainly applies to Orthodox Jews, who must also obey other religious strictures, including one not to engage in sexual relations while the wife is having her period and for seven days after that. At that point she goes to the mikvah, a ritual bath. When she comes home, the couple can have sexual relations. Here’s one more case where you could look at the glass being half empty or half full. You could say that because of their religion, almost half of the time Orthodox Jews are not allowed to have sex. Or else you could say that every month, after this time set aside for abstinence, they are literally desperate to get into bed with each other, and that those times when they have sex are the best times because of their heightened arousal. Joie de vivre is a matter of attitude, and anyone who takes a positive attitude toward sex can actually find great pleasure, no matter what the challenges.
I know that the readers of this book aren’t necessarily Jewish and may not even believe in God. Most anyone can experience joie de vivre; however, those who are cynical to the extreme and believe in nothing will have a much harder time. Being a human is very special. You don’t have to believe that God has given us our life force, but if you look at the world without appreciating all the blessings we have, the beauty of the earth, the goodness and kindness of its inhabitants, the love that can be shared, then you’ll never feel real joy. So . . . believe in something and embrace your passions!
CHAPTER IV
Open Yourself Up to Love: My History in Love and Marriage
What is life without love? And what is love without heartache? I’ve had three husbands. In two cases, it’s the love that died; in the third—and longest—it was my husband who passed away
. But as Edith Piaf sang, “Je ne regrette rien.” I don’t regret any of it because without the vibrancy of love, life is very pale.
A lot of young people go through an awkward stage, but eventually they grow out of it, and soon enough someone from the opposite sex is showing some interest in them. Since I’m only four foot seven, I never entirely grew out of my awkward stage, and for a long time in my youth I was certain that no man would ever find me attractive. I’ve already told you about my first boyfriend, Putz, and the male nurse with whom I had an affair—and that I’ve had three husbands—so obviously, my predictive powers were off back then. But I also know that my realistic assessment of my situation was important because it helped me to be proactive. If I couldn’t rely on my statuesque figure to lure men, then I had to have a backup plan. And part of that was exhibiting joie de vivre, even though at that time I had no idea what that meant. On the one hand, I felt very low when I was by myself, very unsettled with my life in Palestine, and even more uncertain about my future. On the other hand, when I was with my friends—say, at the dances that we had on the kibbutz on Friday nights—I let my real personality shine through, and the male friends that I’d made responded appropriately. Of course I did more than just be myself. For example, there was one man I liked and who liked me. Actually, he liked me more than I liked him, but I certainly liked the attention. I figured out how to time it so that when he went to lunch at the kibbutz, I’d go in at exactly the same time and we’d sit together. This technique had the desired effect, and his affection for me grew. However, when I met his brother (who was a soldier—I found his uniform very sexy), I quickly changed my sights, and future sniper that I would become, I hit the mark.
The Doctor Is In Page 5