Did You Know: Sex Therapist Dr. Ruth Used To Be An Israeli Sniper

Do you follow Dr. Ruth on Twitter? Good Lord, what a delightful experience that is. You’ll be scrolling through a timeline filled with amateur hour attempts at comedy and/or unnecessarily strong reactions to minor news stories and/or unnecessarily strong responses to those initial unnecessarily strong reactions, and then, like a life-saving oasis in the desert, boom…

… boom…

… boom…

You should follow Dr. Ruth. This is what I’m getting at.

Anyway, this weekend I was scrolling back through her timeline when I stumbled across this tweet, and I’m not 100% sure I’ll ever get over it.

Yup, Dr. Ruth, the diminutive octogenarian sex therapist (and Holocaust survivor), was trained as a sniper and fought in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. She discussed it a bit with The New Yorker last year:

“In 1947 and ’48, everybody in then-Palestine belonged to some group. I chose the group that was the forerunner of the Israel Defense Forces. And I did not know that I had good aim. So when they did some selection, whatever, they put me in a group and they taught me how to put the Sten gun together. I shot the sky very nicely with my eyes closed.” Fortunately, she never had to put her skills to use. “I have no idea what the experience would be, if I had to show it. But I was a very good sniper. I could put the five bullets in the red circle. And I know how to throw hand grenades.”

So, what did we learn here? Well, a few things. We learned that Dr. Ruth has lived a fascinating life. We learned that you should not judge popular radio sex therapists by their adorable 4’7″ exteriors. And we learned that everyone in Hollywood should be fired for not turning this into a sprawling 3-hour Oscar bait biopic like 10 years ago (I’m picturing Saving Private Ryan meets the 1992 Dolly Parton comedy Straight Talk).

But most importantly, if we’re taking any one thing away from this news, we learned that you should never, ever mess with Dr. Ruth.

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