Welcome to the ‘tribe,’ Alanis Morissette

(RNS) — You want comprise to discuss about existence imitating art work?

Or, as the case could maybe maybe be, existence imitating Torah?

Here goes.

On this week’s Torah fragment, we learn the chronicle of the infancy and younger maturity of Moses. Moses used to be an Israelite exiguous one, despatched away by his dad and mother to set him from the destiny of Egyptian slavery. Pharaoh’s daughter goes to the Nile River to scrub and he or she spots the exiguous one floating in a little, makeshift vessel. She adopts him as her son and raises him to maturity in her father’s palace.

At a obvious point, Moses comes to sense that he has a connection with the Israelites — that they are, if reality be told, his of us. He slays an Egyptian taskmaster who had been beating a slave; he intervenes in a quarrel between two Israelite slaves; he escapes from Egypt into the desolate tract — and the leisure is historical previous.

Now not handiest Jewish historical previous, nonetheless the entire historical previous of Western religion.

So Moses used to be a hidden “Jewish” child, blind to his personal identification unless one thing (we’re not rather clear what) occurs. The spark is there and it becomes a flame.

Rapid-ahead to at the fresh time — to the well-liked singer-songwriter Alanis Morissette, who has sold bigger than 85 million albums worldwide.

On a new episode of the PBS expose “Discovering Your Roots,” that’s precisely what Alanis did. She found her roots, and he or she stumbled on she is Jewish.

(To paraphrase the chronicle in Kveller: This discovery presents new which technique to the song “You Oughta Know” — warning: bright lyrics).

Alanis is the daughter of a Canadian gentile father and a Jewish mother whose dad and mother were Hungarian Holocaust survivors who had concealed their Jewish identification — reminiscent of the oldsters of the gradual Secretary of Assert Madeleine Albright.

“I judge there used to be a difficulty that used to be in their bones … objective exact not wanting antisemitism. So they were doing it to give protection to us, to carry us at nighttime,” Alanis suggested PBS host Henry Louis Gates Jr.

So, to cite the Talmudic line: What assemble we learn from this?

First, here is an updated version of the phenomenon that creator David E. Kaufman called “Jew-hooing:”

Citing Jewish celebrities — “Didja know, Natalie Portman is Jewish!” — is characteristic of many Jews, and the persistent behavioral quirk has even been given a name: “Jewhooing.”  The puckish timeframe befits an exercise that some interrogate as ethnocentric and crass — one could maybe maybe even object that it is not a match subject for a basic be taught of American Jewish identification. However … while embarrassing to some, (it) is admittedly objective exact the tip of the iceberg and parts to a deeper relationship between Jews and megastar total. It demonstrates that Jews are a phase of The US … and that Jews, despite their mammoth integration and participation in American existence, nonetheless remain distinctive, even distinctive, and thus stand other than The US.

In the 1960s, the most renowned case of “Jew-hooing” used to be the identification of the singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, nee Zimmerman, as Jewish. American Jews, concurrently alive to to slot in and to say ethnic satisfaction and distinctiveness, even generally regarded as if it would get Jewish celebrities, the technique younger of us get baseball cards.

That used to be the point of Adam Sandler’s “Hanukkah [or is it Chanukah?] Tune,” which lists celebrities who’re Jewish, “half of Jewish,” i.e., Paul Newman and Goldie Hawn, and even one-quarter Jewish, i.e., Harrison Ford.

The purpose is: Ethnic satisfaction is a extremely crucial phase of American tradition. (Who can neglect the Greek father in “My Expansive Stout Greek Wedding” and his obsession with discovering issues with Greek origins? That film could maybe maybe were about any ethnic neighborhood.)

By technique of the Jews, that game of “catch the Jewish megastar” has repeatedly been abundant, attributable to it parts to our acceptance in American society. We need it and we crave it.

However, 2nd: Timing, as they are saying, is all the issues — and so is the timing for this announcement about Alanis.

The Jewish psyche is uncooked and bruised. Presumably we mandatory this announcement — even bigger than Alanis herself mandatory it— with a depth and resonance Alanis could maybe perchance not comprise anticipated.

At a time of proliferating Jew-hatred; at a time when many Jewish college college students are striking their Stars of David inside of their shirts, or inquisitive about taking off their kippot; at a time when many Jews are reportedly altering their surnames on Uber in record to not intention attention to themselves as Jews; at a time when many Jews are tempted to head abet into the closet as Jews, and to fake it is the The US of the 1950s: We “mandatory” an A-checklist current musician to publicly proclaim not handiest her connection to the Jewish of us, nonetheless how that connection had turn into hidden within the predominant divulge.

Realizing, of course, that the announcement of her Jewish identification could maybe maybe sign her the aim of Jew-haters.

One final note.

I am overjoyed Alanis is “now” Jewish, remarkable more overjoyed that she is overjoyed about that discovery.

I in actual fact comprise a message for her.

Alanis, there is a seat looking ahead to you on El Al.

Aquire an additional tag to your guitar.

Let Alanis be part of the little, nonetheless increasing, cadre of American Jewish celebrities who’re deciding on to say up and be most up-to-date for Israel all over this complicated time.

Love, for instance, Jerry Seinfeld, who used to be in Israel recently with his family, visiting those that had been gravely injured on Oct. 7, moreover surviving hostages and their families; and who generously took pictures with passersby, alongside with college students on Taglit-Birthright trips.

That is precisely the model of presence Israel needs pretty now. It is a long way not mere megastar-sighting. Such celebrities are notion-makers.

Thanks, Jerry, for being this kind of mensch.

And that, my chums, just isn’t any yada-yada-yada.