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I was saddened to hear the news today that Dr. Ruth Westheimer has passed away at the age of 96. I danced with her once.
In the mid-1990s, I edited the Voice Literary Supplement, the monthly literary review of the Village Voice, America’s first alternative weekly newspaper. We hosted regular events in New York to publicize our contributors, which often turned into contentious, albeit rewarding affairs, like the night my friend Joe Wood argued with Stanley Crouch about the legacy of the great Albert Murray. Crouch had famously beat up another Voice writer, Harry Allen, to conclude their debate about music, but that night Joe and Stanley simply moved to the bar to continue their argument.
The VLS’ publisher wanted to have a party in Chicago to coincide with the American Book Association’s annual book fair. So, we arranged to co-host it with Verso Books, a leftwing publisher then headed up by Colin Robinson, a Brit with a gravelly baritone voice made for BBC radio theatre. The other co-host was The Baffler, a great small magazine based in Chicago and hooked into the city’s lively indy scene so they arranged for the music.
I tried to get David Foster Wallace to come. He was in the area staying at his parents’ home in Illinois. I think it was the year Infinite Jest came out and he’d done lots of publicity, so he opted out. But I’d gotten him to agree to review Joseph Frank’s biography of Dostoevsky. He grumbled when he realized it was a five-volume work, but David’s essay is great — it’s here.
I guess Dr. Ruth had a new book out that year. Her bibliography shows that the ‘90s were perhaps her most prolific decade. She was so famous that Saturday Night Live impersonated her. Dr. Ruth was everywhere — radio, TV, movies. She was also at our party.
I can’t remember who invited her but there she was, the world’s most famous sex counselor standing on the sidelines like a high-school girl at her first dance. She smiled at me. Maybe it was just because I was the host. The music was very loud, so I leaned in closely and then led her to the dance floor. It was only for one song, but she was smiling the whole time, and so was I.
It was only later that I learned about her life. She grew up in an orthodox Jewish family in Frankfurt and at the age of ten her mother sent her to Switzerland to keep her safe. The Gestapo had already taken her father away to Dachau. He was murdered at Auschwitz. Her mother and all her relatives were murdered in the Holocaust. After the war, she moved to pre-state Israel, trained as a sniper with the Haganah, and was wounded during Israel’s war of independence. At the age of 90, she showed she could still reassemble a gun with her eyes closed. She studied in Paris and New York, where she worked as a maid to put herself through school. She spoke German, Hebrew, French, and English. She was married three times and leaves behind her two children. She was a serious woman who knew how to laugh at herself. She made a career out of encouraging people to enjoy their physical intimacy with others. She had an unforgettable smile.
May her memory be a blessing.