Kathie Lee Gifford’s Secret Jewish Ambition

Kathie Lee Gifford Image by Getty Images

By Anne Cohen August 19, 2013

Forget dinner and flowers — Kathie Lee Gifford wants something a little out of the ordinary for her birthday.

The “Today Show” host, who celebrated her 60th birthday on Friday alongiside co-host Hoda Kotb, read out a submission from a 60-year-old viewer who said she was in her senior year of college, graduating in November.

“Would you go back to college if you could?” Gifford asked Kotb.

“No,” the latter replied. “I think that there’s a lot you can learn, but you don’t really have to be in college,”

And then, Gifford dropped the bombshell.

“I want to go to Yeshiva University and become a rabbi,” Gifford, who was born Kathryn Lee Epstein, but is a born-again Christian. “I want to get my Orthodox rabbinical degree… I want to understand what words mean, what all the context is. I’m so fascinated by that stuff.”

As the Times of Israel pointed out, Gifford’s grandfather was a Russian Jew. In 2000, she told Larry King that “my father’s Jewish by birth and by race and blood. My mom was raised Christian, and we were raised in a godly home… We didn’t go to synagogue, but I was raised with many Jewish traditions and raised to be very grateful for my Jewish heritage, and taught all my life that Jesus was Jewish, the disciples were Jewish, Mary Magadalene was Jewish. It was all came — the first pope was Peter. He was Jewish.”

Maybe someone should tell her that Y.U. isn’t the best place for a woman to get ordained as a rabbi

Anne Cohen was the Forward’s deputy digital media editor. When she’s not looking for the secret Jewish history of Voodoo in New Orleans, or making lists about Ruth Bader Ginsburg, she writes for The Assimilator. She graduated from the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism with an M.S. magazine concentration in 2012.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO