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Remembering Dr. Ruth: An Unexpected Jewish Icon
Dr. Ruth Westheimer was one of the funniest people I’ve ever met. A dynamo, she was always full of energy, quick with a joke, and offered great advice.
When I was walking with a female friend who complained about going to too many parties, Dr. Ruth turned to her and said: “You’re not going to meet someone in your apartment.”
I interviewed Dr. Ruth a few times, and ran into her on occasion when I went to the theater. She was extremely proud of her documentary, Ask Dr. Ruth, which can be seen on Hulu. Westheimer died at the age of 96 on July 12.
The film includes old footage of her saying that what two consenting adults do in “the privacy of their bedroom, living room, [and] kitchen floor is all right.”
A licensed sex therapist who taught at Columbia University, she rose to fame with radio and TV shows in which she helped people discuss their personal sexual difficulties. She also maintained that short people were the best lovers. She was someone who said there was no such thing as “normal,” and said those who are gay deserve “all the respect” in the world — at a time when that was not a popular opinion. The film shows her saying she hoped for a cure for AIDS, and that it was wrong to blame any one group.
Born as Karola Siegel on June 4, 1928, she originally lived near Frankfurt, Germany. She was put on a Kindertransport — a program to save German children from the Holocaust — and lived in an orphanage in Switzerland during World War II. She got letters from her parents and grandmother, but when the letters stopped, she knew something was terribly wrong.
Dr. Ruth’s family was murdered by the Nazis, with her father dying in Auschwitz in 1942 and no exact record of her mother’s death.
She sailed to the British mandate of Palestine, and went to a kibbutz in 1945 at the war’s end. She changed her name from Karola, to her middle name of Ruth. She lost her virginity to a man named Kalman on a haystack, as she described in her film.
Signing the guest book at the Yad Vashem Museum in Israel, she held back tears, saying “German Jews don’t cry in public.”
Perhaps it was due to the loss of her parents that she wanted to spread love to so many and influence people to pursue happiness.
When I knew her, she was always running to the next event or appearance. When I asked her why she scheduled so many events, she told me: “As long as I’m alive, I am going to work and I love having things to do and talking to people.”
She was very much like the world’s cutest grandmother — but that also belies her past.
Westheimer was a sniper in the Haganah. Though an injury to her feet when a cannon fired on her building nearly resulted in the amputation of her legs, she healed and was able to ski and dance.
She was married three times, with her last husband, Fred, being the long-time marriage. She studied at the Sorbonne. In 1956, she came to America.
“Somebody who talks so much about sex has to stay away from politics,” she said in her film, though she said abortion should remain legal.
She read romance novels to learn English. She took great pride in her grandchildren — Leora, Ari, Ben, and Michal. At the age of 42, she got her doctorate from Columbia University’s Teachers College and would go on to write numerous books.
Dr. Ruth was a huge personality, and could make anyone laugh and appreciate her wisdom. Whenever I saw her, she was smiling, and you could tell she loved life and helping others.
Her blend of chutzpah, charm, and brute honesty made her a quotable and prominent celebrity. She was humble and didn’t move to a hugely expensive apartment, even though she could have, choosing to remain in Washington Heights. It was her decision to appear on WYNY, a New York City radio station that helped launch her career with a show first called “Sexually Speaking.” She also did some acting.
Despite her painful past, Dr. Ruth is a great example of a nice person achieving great things in life.
The author is a writer based in New York.
The post Remembering Dr. Ruth: An Unexpected Jewish Icon first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Ukraine reburies Nazi collaborator with state honors, drawing Israeli condemnation
(JTA) — Israel criticized Ukraine Monday after President Volodymyr Zelensky gave full state honors to a Ukrainian nationalist leader who was part of a movement that collaborated with the Nazis during World War II.
During a reburial ceremony on Sunday, Zelensky described Andriy Melnyk and his wife, Sofia Fedak-Melnyk, as “iconic Ukrainians of the 20th century who are deeply respected,” according to The New York Times.
Melnyk led one of the factions of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists during its collaboration with Nazi Germany during World War II. Though the Ukrainian organization shared a mutual opposition to Soviet rule with the Nazis, it also promoted antisemitic rhetoric and some of its members participated in the persecution of Jews during the Holocaust. Melnyk initially sought cooperation with Nazi Germany but was later detained by the Nazis as relations with Ukrainian nationalist groups deteriorated.
The ceremony marked the latest flashpoint in a longstanding dispute over Ukraine’s commemoration of World War II-era nationalist figures linked to Nazi collaboration. In 2018, the country designated the birthday of Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera as a holiday, and in 2017, a statue was unveiled honoring a nationalist leader whose regime killed tens of thousands of Jews in pogroms during the Russian Revolution.
The remains of Melnyk and his wife were exhumed from Luxembourg last week and then transported to Ukraine for reburial at Kyiv’s National Military Memorial, which opened last year for soldiers killed in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“Glory to every Ukrainian hero! Glory to all our Ukrainian warriors! Glory to our people!,” Zelensky, who is Jewish, wrote in a post on X marking the ceremony, adding that he was “grateful to everyone who has worked to make such returns of great Ukrainian figures possible and to give the Ukrainian People their own pantheon of heroes.”
The reburial was quickly decried by Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial, which wrote in a post on X that it was “deeply troubled by such national commemorations, which come at the expense of historical truth and the memory of Holocaust victims.”
“Honoring the leader of a movement that supported and collaborated with Nazi Germany during the persecution and murder of millions of Jews undermines the moral integrity essential to Holocaust remembrance,” the post read.
Israel’s Foreign Ministry wrote on X that there is “no place for ignoring historical truth and the memory of the victims murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators.”
The post Ukraine reburies Nazi collaborator with state honors, drawing Israeli condemnation appeared first on The Forward.
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Trump administration again sues UCLA over antisemitism, alleging ‘hostile educational environment’
(JTA) — The U.S. Department of Justice sued the University of California for the second time this year over allegations of an antisemitic campus environment at UCLA, claiming the school “was deliberately indifferent to the suffering of its Jewish and Israeli students” after Oct. 7.
The federal lawsuit, filed Tuesday, claims UCLA violated the students’ civil rights by failing to intervene during pro-Palestinian encampment activity in early 2024. It follows an earlier suit that focused on the university’s treatment of its Jewish and Israeli employees, and comes 10 days after the university unveiled its own “Initiative to Combat Antisemitism.”
“Earlier this year, we sued UCLA for subjecting its Jewish and Israeli employees to an antisemitic hostile work environment,” assistant U.S. attorney general Harmeet Dhillon said in a press release. “Now, the Department of Justice calls UCLA to account for its toleration of the equally appalling hostile educational environment against its Jewish and Israeli students.”
Requests for comment to the Justice Department and UCLA were not immediately returned.
The new suit draws on widely reported accounts of UCLA’s campus environment in spring 2024, when protesters in pro-Palestinian encampments clashed with pro-Israel counter-protesters, sparking violence and turmoil. The failure to protect Jewish students violated their Title VI civil rights, attorneys said.
Citing the report of UCLA’s own task force on antisemitism, published in response to the 2024 campus upheaval, the suit states, “UCLA’s leadership apparently preferred a do-nothing ‘de-escalation strategy’ to protecting their Jewish and Israeli students from an angry mob organized by peers armed with tasers, lumber, and a sword.”
The Justice Department is seeking several redress measures, including the return of all federal grants made to UCLA “during the time of UCLA’s noncompliance with Title VI.” The school had previously resolved several Title VI antisemitism cases under the Biden administration, and also reached a $6.13 million settlement with Jewish groups in a private suit related to the spring 2024 incidents on campus — a case cited in DOJ’s new lawsuit.
The Trump administration has sought to make a particular example of UCLA in its aggressive approach to campus antisemitism. Officials had sought to levy fines in excess of $1 billion against the public university for its alleged failure to protect Jewish and Israeli students, until a federal judge intervened. Several DOJ lawyers have left the department over its UCLA investigation, telling reporters the case was “fraudulent,” a “sham” and driven by pressure to “find” evidence to support further legal action against UCLA.
In addition, some of the most violent clashes on the campuses included perpetrators on both sides of the conflict, leading some members of the UCLA Jewish community to complain that pro-Israel counter-protesters ultimately undercut the Jewish students’ legitimate grievances regarding the harassment they had been facing inside the campus gates.
And the campus environment for Jews remains tense. Last month, the UCLA student senate condemned a campus visit by a freed Israeli hostage, drawing blowback from a university regent.
The post Trump administration again sues UCLA over antisemitism, alleging ‘hostile educational environment’ appeared first on The Forward.
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Jewish leaders say Belgium’s prosecution of circumcision is antisemitic
(JTA) — Dozens of European Jewish leaders, joined by Israeli and American diplomats, decried Antwerp prosecutors who plan to charge two Jewish men with performing illegal circumcisions.
In an open letter on Tuesday to European and Belgian officials, 45 communal and religious Jewish leaders accused the Antwerp Public Prosecutor’s Office of “effectively criminalizing the act of circumcision” and infringing on religious freedom.
Earlier this month, Belgian prosecutors announced their recommendation to refer two mohels, or ritual circumcisers, to the criminal court following investigations into alleged illegal circumcisions.
In Belgium, the law requires all circumcisions to be performed by licensed medical professionals. The two men would be charged with intentional assault or battery against minors and the unlawful practice of medicine.
The European Jewish leaders responded that prosecuting mohels was “antisemitic in nature, reminiscent of efforts taken in Europe against Jewish practice prior to the Second World War.”
They said the potential prosecutions sent a message that “Jews are no longer welcome in Belgium” and “Belgian Jews are now second class citizens with limited rights.” Their appeal was led by the chairman of the European Jewish Association, Rabbi Menachem Margolin.
Israeli and U.S. officials have also accused Belgium of targeting Jews for practicing their faith.
Gideon Saar, Israel’s minister of foreign affairs, called the prosecutors’ decision a “scarlet letter on Belgian society.” He was joined by the U.S. ambassador to Belgium, Bill White, who said on X that Belgium “will be thought of now as anti Semitic by world.”
Belgium’s foreign minister fired back that it was “inappropriate to publicly criticize a country and tarnish its image simply because you disagree with judicial proceedings.”
“I recall that the proceedings in question were initiated by representatives of the Jewish community themselves,” said Maxime Prévot. “To portray those as a country’s desire to undermine the religious freedom of Jews is defamatory.”
The mohels were first investigated after complaints lodged by Moshe Aryeh Friedman, an Antwerp rabbi. He alleged in 2023 that six local mohels practiced metzitzah b’peh, in which the circumciser cleans the circumcision wound with oral suction. Over the past two decades, several infants in New York City were infected with herpes as a result of the practice.
The letter from European Jewish leaders did not address Friedman’s claims.
The post Jewish leaders say Belgium’s prosecution of circumcision is antisemitic appeared first on The Forward.