Singer-songwriter Alanis Morissette announced her journey into her family's Jewish heritage, something the seven-time Grammy Award winner said was kept a secret from her for years.
Morissette, who was raised Catholic and is now a practicing Buddhist, explored her past during the recent season premiere of the PBS show "Finding Your Roots."
"I think I found out that I was Jewish in my late 20s. I didn't know," she told her host, Harvard University history professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., according to Times of Israel.
Morissette's mother, Georgia Mary Ann Feuerstein, was born in Hungary to parents who survived the Holocaust: Imre Feuerstein and Nadinia Anna Lauscher/Gulyas.
Family members experienced trauma in the Holocaust, prompting them to keep their Jewishness a secret for many years, Gates said.
"I think there was a terror that is in their bones and they were being protective of us and just not wanting antisemitism," Morissette said. "So they were doing it to protect us, sort of keeping us in the dark around it."
Morissette, 49, is the latest in a long list of celebrities to explore their ancestry on the show.
Previously, Julia Roberts was left speechless after learning that she is not, in fact, a "Roberts." Her supposed great-great-grandfather, Willis Roberts, died more than a decade before her great-grandfather was born.
Willis was married to Julia Roberts' great-great-grandmother Rhoda Suttle Roberts since the 1850s, but he died in 1864, leaving a questionable gap. Gates Jr. was able to trace Julia Roberts back to a man named Henry McDonald Mitchell Jr.
Racial activist Angela Davis also previously appeared on the show, learning that she is descended from a passenger on the Mayflower, one of the first settlers in America.
By tracing her father's white father, Murphy Jones, Gates was able to determine that Davis' 10th great-grandfather was William Brewster, who came to the colonies in 1620 aboard the Mayflower.
Zoe Papadakis ✉
Zoe Papadakis is a Newsmax writer based in South Africa with two decades of experience specializing in media and entertainment. She has been in the news industry as a reporter, writer and editor for newspapers, magazine and websites.
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