Dr. Ruth was a Jewish heroine

(RNS) — You must admit — 96 years is a pretty good run for anyone.

That was my first thought upon hearing of the death of Dr. Ruth Westheimer, the famous sex therapist who died this past weekend. Especially because she embodied the words of that other famous over-80-years-old Jewish icon, Bob Dylan. She was “forever young” and playful and funny and sweet. 

Today, I join countless others in mourning Dr. Ruth — for many reasons, but also because she was a Jewish heroine. 

It is not only because she embodied modern Jewish history. She was born in Germany in 1928; part of the Kindertransport; lost her entire family during the Holocaust; served in the Haganah in Israel’s formative battles. I bumped into Dr. Ruth several times — each of them, during trips to Israel.

It is not only because she was a Jewish leader. She served as honorary president of Hebrew Tabernacle Congregation in Washington Heights, at the northern tip of Manhattan. She received an honorary doctorate from my alma mater, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, for her work in human sexuality, and she was honored by the Leo Baeck Institute, among other honors and accolades. 

A word about Washington Heights, in northern Manhattan — north of Harlem and just south of the Cloisters.

Dr. Ruth is the second great iconic German-American-Jewish Washington Heights-ian to die in recent months — the first being Henry née Heinz Kissinger.

Washington Heights has been on my mind recently. Just last week, I visited there briefly. Several days later, on the plane to Israel, I re-watched “In the Heights,” Lin-Manuel Miranda’s love song to the Dominican community in that neighborhood (Lin-Manuel lives there).

That story takes place, largely, east of Broadway.

West of Broadway, where the Heights truly earns its name and you ascend the streets and avenues on staircases, has been traditionally German-Jewish — the result of the immigration of German Jewish refugees from Hitler, earning the neighborhood the sobriquet of the “Fourth Reich.” It is a great community, with spectacular vistas of the Hudson River. Today, it is a thick soup of Latinos; aging German Jews; Orthodox Jews, because many of the German Jewish immigrants were from the German Orthodox Breuer community, and the presence of Yeshiva University; plus the assorted hipsters, millennials and others who know a great neighborhood when they see one. And yes, it is an express subway stop. 

More than all this, Dr. Ruth Westheimer was a Jewish heroine because her work was simultaneously humanist, compassionate, passionate and Jewish. 

What made her work Jewish?

The whole subject of Jews and sex has been the source of laughter, wisdom, intellectual striving and, yes, hatred. (Are you surprised?) Jew haters have seen Jewish men as both insufficiently sexual (i.e., effeminate) and hyper-sexual. In the Middle Ages, Jew haters invented stories of how Jewish men menstruate. In Nazi Germany, Jew haters invented stories of how Jewish men violate Aryan women. As for Jewish women, they have been both idealized as virginal, and over-sexualized as temptresses. 

As for sex therapy, it is natively Jewish (as one might say that much of psychotherapy, going back to Freud, is Jewish). Dr. Ruth’s tutor was Helen Singer Kaplan. One of the most famous sex therapists was Magnus Hirschfeld, who pioneered work among LGBTQ Jews in Nazi Germany. The Nazis forced Hirschfeld to flee to France, where he died in 1935.

Forget what you think you know about Judaism and sexuality. Forget the jokes — most of them uttered in nervousness and/or ignorance. 

I lack both the time and space to take you on a complete journey through Judaism and sexuality. 

For the moment, let me emphasize: Judaism is an erotically friendly tradition. Yes, that is an over-simplification. Yes, there are many nuances here. Yes, it is an eros that has been aged and confined within limitations and boundaries. All that is true. 

But, also for the moment, let two lessons suffice.

First: you cannot read the Hebrew Bible without encountering a deep, lusty Jewish attitude toward sexuality, albeit most of it patriarchal. 

I thought of that this past Shabbat in Jerusalem. I worshipped at Kehilat Zion, a masorti (Israeli traditional/“Conservative”) synagogue led by the remarkable Rabbi Tamar Elad-Appelbaum. The congregation has adopted the Jewish custom of chanting Song of Songs — Shir HaShirim — as the Sabbath begins. Song of Songs is a series of poems about two lovers seeking each other’s embrace (and more).

The ancient rabbis believed it was an allegory — the two lovers being God and the Jewish people. Me thinks the rabbis doth protest too much; this is pure erotica. It encapsulates a Jewish approach to the erotic. Many modern Jews know at least one piece of Jewish tradition — that sex on Shabbat is a “double mitzvah.” 

You worship at Kehilat Zion, and you emerge with the correct impression: Shabbat is sexy. 

Especially in Jerusalem. 

Second: decades ago, when I first studied Talmudic texts, I encountered this little text — a text that contains worlds. 

It is the story of a certain sage, Rav Kahana, who hid under the bed of his teacher, Rav, while the teacher was engaged in sexual intercourse with his wife — and laughing and giggling while doing so. Rav realized that his student was underneath the bed and castigated him for his rudeness in being there. (Talmud, Berachot 62a).

To which Kahana replied: “This is Torah, and I must learn.”

On one level, it is a comical story. On another level, it is a story of rabbinic voyeurism. 

But, on quite another level, it is a profoundly Jewish story. “This is Torah, and I must learn.”

Dr. Ruth Westheimer. Photo by John Mathew Smith via Wikimedia

Dr. Ruth’s greatest contribution was her sense that what she was doing was, in fact, a kind of Torah — and people must learn it.

To which I must add, with pride: It was a blessing that America’s most prolific and most beloved teacher of sexuality was a diminutive German-Jewish woman who was active in the Jewish community. I can only wonder: How many people in this world had a better sex life because of this woman’s advice and presence?

One last thing about Dr. Ruth and her Jewish identity. 

She was fond of saying: “Looking at my four grandchildren: Hitler lost and I won.”

Over the course of my congregational career, there were many times when I would officiate at a bar or bat mitzvah ceremony wherein the child was the grandchild of Holocaust survivors. Invariably, I would say to the child/emerging Jewish adult: “You are the fist that we shake in the face of Hitler, may his name be erased. You are the living embodiment that yes, he lost, and yes, we won.”

To know now that I was unconsciously channeling Dr. Ruth is a blessing. 

Her life was a blessing.