How to love your partner

I will always remember when I first met Dr. Ruth.

It was a few months before her 75th birthday – so, a little more than 21 years ago. I was at a Jewish charity event, and was walking by a few of the tables where various auction items and services were being offered. One was "Lunch with Dr. Ruth Westheimer at the Ocean Grill." I felt a tap on my shoulder.

I turned around and it was Dr. Ruth. She had two words for me, and delivered them in her famous German accented English. "Buy me!"

DR. RUTH WESTHEIMER, AMERICA'S ‘SEX THERAPIST,’ DEAD AT 96

A little taken aback, I said the only thing one could say to Dr. Ruth: "Okay."

She reiterated it. "Buy me! I want to have the lunch with you."

I won the auction. I had no idea why Dr. Ruth was so insistent that I "buy" her. But she was a Jew, and so am I. Deep in the Jewish tradition, starting with the story of Joseph in late Genesis, is the idea that the world is full of things whose meaning and significance will only be revealed much later. I surely did not know then – and doubt that she did either – that the lunch at Ocean Grill would turn into a great friendship of more than two decades which would have a massive impact on my life and that of others who became close to me.

When Dr. Ruth insisted that I "buy" her 21 years ago, I only knew of her as the famous sex therapist who was on the radio all the time during my childhood. In getting to know her, I came to know that my friend was not just a famous sex therapist – but a genuine hero who embodied the best of what it means to be an American and a Jew.

Dr. Ruth Westheimer holds a copy of her book "Sex for Dummies" at the International Frankfurt Book Fair 'Frankfurter Buchmesse' in Frankfurt, Germany, Thursday, Oct. 11, 2007. Westheimer, the sex therapist who became a pop icon, media star and best-selling author through her frank talk about once-taboo bedroom topics, died on Friday, July 12, 2024. She was 96. ((AP Photo/Bernd Kammerer))

Karola Ruth Siegel was born on June 4, 1928 in Frankfurt, Germany. Her happy and prosperous childhood was interrupted on Kristallnacht (the Night of Broken Glass) – which occurred five months after her tenth birthday. On that night, the Nazis arrested, beat, killed and destroyed or confiscated the property of many of the Jews in Germany. Karola’s father, Julius Siegel, was one of those arrested.

She always remembered him waving goodbye to her as he was arrested – hiding what must have been sheer terror from his little girl whom he did not want to frighten. She would never see him again. Despite a lifetime of trying, she was never able to find out where or how he was killed.

Her mother, Irma Siegel, realized that her daughter had to leave Germany. Within six weeks of Kristallnacht, Irma had the solution. She got her daughter a spot on the Kindertransport – a program through which a small number of Jewish children were permitted to leave Nazi-occupied countries, unaccompanied, to Great Britain and a few other nations. Dr. Ruth’s train was bound for Switzerland. She always remembered her mother saying goodbye to her at the station, assuring her that they would be together again after a short trip. Her mother knew this was not so, but she had to send her daughter off to safety. Dr. Ruth did find out what happened to her mother. She was killed at Auschwitz.

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Ruth spent the war years at an orphanage in Switzerland – where she made lifelong friends she would talk about often. At the end of the war, she had no home to go back to. But she did have an emerging homeland – in what was then called Mandatory Palestine, soon to be Israel. She lived on a kibbutz, went to school, learned Hebrew and joined the Haganah – the fighting force that was the predecessor to the IDF. She was trained as a sniper.

On June 4, 1948 – two weeks into the War of Independence and Dr. Ruth’s 20th birthday – she was grievously wounded in the leg. She always spoke with great gratitude........

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