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Alanis Morissette is exploring 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,” Morissette explained, “I think I found out that I was Jewish in my late 20s. I didn’t know.”

Morissette was raised Catholic and is now a practicing Buddhist. The family’s experience in the Holocaust was so traumatic that they kept their heritage a secret for many years. Morissette said, “I think there was a terror that is in their bones and they were being protective of us and just not wanting antisemitism. So they were doing it to protect us, sort of keeping us in the dark around it.”