Stephen Colbert, host of “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” which will air its last episode in May 2026 (much to our chagrin and rage!), is not Jewish.
And yet, he has been celebrating the Jewish High Holidays — Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, and Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement — for many, many years.
And his shofar skills are nothing short of legendary,
Before Colbert started hosting “The Late Show” in 2015, he hosted “The Colbert Report” as his same-named fictional persona — a parody of a wildly ignorant conservative Christian pundit (one that he honed on “The Daily Show” with Jon Stewart). For years, on every Yom Kippur, Colbert would urge Jewish viewers to call and atone to him on his Atone Phone (the number was 1-888-OOPS-JEW). “Traditionally this is a time to apologize to all those you have wronged. Now I do not follow this tradition because I am not Jewish and I have never been wrong,” Colbert joked.
The segment began in 2006 and on the last season of the show in 2014, Colbert only got one call — from musician Jeff Tweedy, who had recently converted to Judaism and apologized to the comedian for not inviting him to his bar mitzvah.
And while Colbert stopped playing that satirical character and started playing himself on the late show in 2015, he didn’t abandon his shofar. In 2016, on his first season, he blew it with Jewish staff singing “shana tova” to “Auld Lang Syne,” as they wore glasses adorned by the numbers of the Jewish new year alongside apples and honey and a round challah. It was epic.
That same year, he gave us an iconic shofar blowing segment in which he blew it on incredible key, and pronounced “Rosh Hashanah” and “shofar” in ways both accurate and hilarious.
And because he was being himself, he kept it real about how bad a shofar can really smell. “You ever smell a dead ram?” he asked his trumpet player, John, before giving him a whiff.
“Haven’t the Jewish people suffered enough?” Colbert lamented.
We feel so seen. Thank you for saying what so many of us are too reverent to say.
Stephen Colbert has always been on the up and up with Jewish tradition, and even showed off his Yiddish skills to Barbra Streisand herself in his 2023 interview with the EGOT winner, who very rarely gives candid interviews. In my opinion, getting the honor of to interview Barbra Streisand definitely makes you an honorary Jew. It’s basically a bar mitzvah.
So shana tova, Stephen Colbert. You’re invited to our Rosh Hashanah table any time — especially if you bring that shofar.
