Short answer: No. David Letterman was born in Indianapolis in 1947 and was raised Presbyterian, a background he described himself on Jimmy Kimmel Live in October 2017. His mother, Dorothy, later served 16 years as secretary of Second Presbyterian Church of Indianapolis. No reputable source documents Jewish parentage on either side, and no conversion has been reported.
What the record actually shows
- Born April 12, 1947, in Indianapolis, Indiana, as David Michael Letterman, to Harry Joseph Letterman (1915-1973), a florist who died of a heart attack at 57, and Dorothy Marie Letterman, née Hofert (1921-2017). He has two sisters, Jan and Gretchen.
- His mother later served a 16-year tenure as secretary at Second Presbyterian Church in Indianapolis, after earlier working part-time at the family flower shop. She married H. Joe Letterman in 1942, remarried Hans P. Mengering in 1983, and is buried at Crown Hill Cemetery in Indianapolis. Her memorial page notes, "Family was always extremely important to her, especially her grandchildren, whose births spanned from 1967 to 2003." (Crown Hill Heritage Foundation). She died April 11, 2017, at 95, one day before Letterman's 70th birthday, a death covered by NPR and NBC News.
- His best-known on-record remark touching religion was a joke. On the Late Show broadcast of Thursday, October 1, 2009, addressing an extortion attempt against him, Letterman said, "I'm motivated by nothing but guilt. I'm a towering mass of Lutheran Midwestern guilt." (CBS News). That is a punchline about Midwestern Protestant temperament, and it names a denomination he was not raised in.
- He has addressed his background directly at least once. Speaking with Jimmy Kimmel in an October 2017 interview, Letterman described being brought up in the Presbyterian tradition by his mother. His adult religious practice is otherwise not documented.
- A Jewish outlet has addressed the question directly. Aish published a humor piece, "Top Ten Reasons People Mistake David Letterman for a Jew," which states flatly, "For the record: he's not." (Aish). It is comedy, not biography, but it sits alongside the parentage record rather than against it.
- He is still working. On August 13, 2026, Netflix announced Season 7 of "My Next Guest Needs No Introduction with David Letterman," returning later this year with Matt Damon, Julia Roberts, Jimmy Kimmel and Alex Honnold, as reported by Variety and Deadline. Season 6, which premiered December 16, 2025, is Emmy-nominated for outstanding hosted nonfiction series or special. Letterman lives in North Salem, New York, with his wife Regina Lasko and their son Harry.
Why people ask
Mostly the beard. Letterman signed off from the Late Show in May 2015 and grew it out, and the result reads to a lot of people as rabbinical. He has joked about it himself. Paul Shaffer recounted, in a Times of Israel piece published March 18, 2017, that Letterman came out to a Chabad organization dinner honoring Shaffer, presented the award, and said, "I can't tell you how many people have come up to me and asked, 'Rabbi, which way to the buffet?'" (The Times of Israel). Shaffer's setup was exactly that: the post-retirement beard gets Letterman taken for an Orthodox rabbi at Jewish events.
The rest is adjacency. Shaffer, his bandleader from the NBC premiere of Late Night in 1982 through the 2015 retirement, is Jewish. He grew up in Thunder Bay, Ontario, among roughly 40 Jewish families, and as JTA reported on June 16, 2017, "The only synagogue was Orthodox. So Shaffer had an Orthodox bar mitzvah and learned to love Orthodox services, which he says he still attends from time to time at a synagogue in Manhattan." (JTA). Thirty-three years beside a Jewish bandleader, a comedy career full of Jewish guests (The Forward catalogued the show's Jewish moments in a piece timed to the May 20, 2015 finale), a surname ending in "man" and a production company called Worldwide Pants add up to a strong impression and no evidence. None of that is a fact about Letterman's own background, and the facts about his own background point the other way.
David Letterman and Israel
Letterman has no public record on Israel. A search of reputable outlets across 2024 to 2026 turns up no statement from him on Israel, on October 7, on Gaza, or on antisemitism, and his philanthropy, which runs through the Letterman Foundation for Courtesy and Grooming toward Indiana and Montana causes, Habitat for Humanity International, Ball State University and the American Cancer Society, includes no documented Jewish or Israel-related giving. The closest thing to an Israel-adjacent broadcast is his interview with Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who is Jewish, filmed in October 2022 on an underground Kyiv subway platform for shelter from Russian airstrikes and aired on Netflix on December 12, 2022, in which Zelenskyy told him a joke that began, "Two Jewish guys from Odesa meet up. One asks the other: 'So what's the situation? What are people saying?'" (The Times of Israel). Full details in our companion piece Does David Letterman Support Israel?.
The bottom line
David Letterman is not Jewish. He was raised Presbyterian, a background he confirmed himself on Jimmy Kimmel Live in October 2017, and his mother spent 16 years as secretary of Second Presbyterian Church in Indianapolis. What people are actually responding to is a beard, a bandleader and a guest list.
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Related
Does David Letterman Support Israel? · /blogs/support/is-lisa-vanderpump-jewish · /blogs/support/is-sacha-baron-cohen-jewish
Last updated August 2026. We update these profiles as the record changes.
