Why Catherine O’Hara felt like family

By any formal definition, Catherine O’Hara wasn’t Jewish. She was born and raised in Toronto in an Irish Catholic family, went to Catholic school, and never claimed Jewish heritage or identity. And yet for years, Jewish audiences watched her work with a sense of recognition. On screen she felt like one of us.

O’Hara’s comedy lived in a space Jewish audiences know well: characters who worry aloud, explain themselves at length and use language as a  survival tool. Her performances were about reactions to a situation, though very often she also provided the punchlines and  telling you exactly how she felt. What could be more Jewish.

O’Hara came up through Toronto’s Second City (SCTV), one of Canada’s most popular comedy sketch show which had many  Jewish writers and performers, notably Eugene Levy with whom she would have a long creative partnership in films like A Mighty Wind and Best in Show in which she played Cookie Fleck.  There were other ‘Jewish’ roles – Delia Deetz  in Beetlejuice and though  Kate McCallister, the mum  in Home Alone wasn’t she panicked like a Jewish mother.

Schitt’s Creek, created by Levy’s son, Dan Levy, gave O’Hara  her most iconic role Moira Rose, who again wasn’t written as Jewish, but with the anglicised Ashkenazi surname of her husband Jonny Rose – Jewish audiences recognised them as such from their behaviour. Moira was indeed the archetypal JAP who faced with the loss of the family fortune struggles to survive with her status stripped and her clothes and accessories no longer required. Yet she still dresses as though she were lunching at The Ritz (or the Waldorf).

Because of Moira , the passing of Catherine O’Hara on 30 January at the age of 71 feels like a community loss  which is born out by the number of Jewish creatives who have paid tribute to her. For Eugene and Dan Levy she was  extended family, while Seth Rogen, who worked with her on the Apple TV+ comedy The Studio, called her one of the funniest people he’d ever seen on screen and Will & Grace star Debra Messing, spoke about O’Hara’s “warmth, brilliance and kindness”.

Their words underscored how deeply her humour cut — not just within comedy circles but in the shared emotional territory that her audiences, Jewish and otherwise, instinctively recognised.Catherine O’Hara didn’t grow up Jewish, but she spoke it fluently.