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Selma's secrets: pretending to be a 'good Jew' and getting drunk on Seder wine

In an exclusive extract from her searingly honest memoir, ‘Mean Baby’, Hollywood star Selma Blair writes about her Jewish upbringing and school days — and how her path to alcoholism began on Seder night when she was seven years old

May 19, 2022 09:53
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8 min read


The role of Judaism in my family was a tricky thing.
My sisters and I were all raised in the Jewish tradition, even though my mother never called herself Jewish. Judaism is matrilineal. Still, I always found it curious, given that her beloved father was Jewish and her mother— for whom she had only disdain — was Scottish and not a Jew, that she chose to identify as Anglican. In her jewellery box, she kept a cross that read, “In case of emergency, contact an Episcopal priest.” She never wore it, out of deference to Elliot [Blair’s father] and our family, but I always knew it was there.
Even though my mother herself didn’t identify as Jewish, it was important to her that I did. I was her chosen one. This became my first big role: to perform Jewishness. Over the years, it became a strange interweaving, where she would pit me against myself, telling me that I needed to be Jewish, telling me that I could never truly be.
My mother never socialised with any Jewish people. As a kid, I used to think she believed they were beneath her. As my sister Katie would say, “She would’ve hidden a Jew, but she doesn’t want to be friends with one.” But now, in hindsight, I suspect she felt as if she didn’t truly belong.


Growing up, we never had a Christmas tree. We celebrated Chanukah and fasted on Yom Kippur. Even my mother fasted. She was always respectful of our Jewish rituals. Her disdain ran somewhere beneath the surface, never outwardly visible. The Holocaust was at the front of her mind at all times. She referred to it often, citing the atrocity of Sophie’s Choice and anchoring me firmly in the mindset of “do not forget.”
My parents sent their three younger daughters to Hillel Day School, partly out of respect for Elliot, but mostly out of convenience. We could take the bus to Hillel, which meant my mother wouldn’t have to drive us to school every morning. (Never mind that the bus ride took an hour and a half, because we were the first to get on.) It was a fully immersive Jewish education—Talmud study, prayer every morning, minyan, a congregation of students engaging in daily Hebrew instruction. I remember feeling grateful to have had this education. Still, my mother made it clear that in her view Hillel was not the be-all and end-all.