Rock star Alanis Morissette uncovers her family’s Holocaust history on PBS’ ‘Finding Your Roots’
The seven-time Grammy winner “found out that I was Jewish in my late 20s”
Alanis Morissette shown on PBS’ celebrity genealogy series ‘Finding Your Roots.’ (Screenshot from YouTube)
(JTA) — Seven-time Grammy Award winner Alanis Morissette explores her family’s Jewish past, which she said was kept a secret from her for most of her life, on Tuesday night’s season premiere of the PBS celebrity genealogy series “Finding Your Roots.”
“I think I found out that I was Jewish in my late 20s. I didn’t know,” Morissette tells host and Harvard University historian Henry Louis Gates Jr. in the episode, a snippet of which was shared exclusively with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Morissette, 49, was raised Catholic and is now a practicing Buddhist. But her mother, Georgia Mary Ann Feuerstein, was born in Hungary to two Holocaust survivor parents, Imre Feuerstein and Nadinia Anna Lauscher/Gulyas.
As Gates explains, the family’s experience in the Holocaust was so traumatic that they kept their Jewishness a secret for many years.
“I think there was a terror that is in their bones and they were being protective of us and just not wanting antisemitism,” Morissette says. “So they were doing it to protect us, sort of keeping us in the dark around it.”
Morissette, who has sold more than 85 million albums worldwide and has performed in Israel multiple times, is the latest in a long list of celebrities to explore their Jewish ancestry on the show, which is returning for its 10th season. Past guests have included Pamela Adlon, Dustin Hoffman, Scarlett Johansson and Paul Rudd.
Later this season, the show will spotlight Jewish comedians Lena Dunham and Iliza Shlesinger; Jewish actor Michael Douglas; and the “Hamilton” star Anthony Ramos and “The View” co-host Sunny Hostin, both of whom have Jewish heritage.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover. All donations are being matched by the Forward Board - up to $100,000.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
