Reply to DH is claiming to be Jewish with no verifiable proof.

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]No, a person is not “Jewish” just because a maternal great-grandmother was Jewish, at least not in the eyes of most people who consider Judaism a religion, not an indelible magic stamp that persists for all time through the maternal bloodline. Yes, I know orthodox rabbis take this view. But... one of my great-grandmothers was Irish. The others were not. This does not make me “Irish,” and does not give me a deep mystical connection to Ireland, it just makes me someone who is about 1/8 Irish in terms of genealogical ancestry. It does not somehow drown out the other seven non-Irish contributors to my genetics.

Being Jewish is a choice he can make. Or not. The fact that a bunch of orthodox rabbis might want him to convert versus say he does not need to convert should not be what defines his choices.[/quote]

Jewish law is what it is. When we say, "he's Jewish," we mean that so long as his maternal grandmother was Jewish, that's sufficient to establish his full-fledged Judaism under traditional Jewish law. This is different from making claims about deep mystical connections, genes, ancestry, or even identity -- and it's not a trump card.

That said, according Jewish law and tradition, there is no such thing as 1/8 Jewish any more than there is such a thing as 1/8 pregnant. Either you are or you aren't.

None of which is necessarily germane to the question of how OP and her husband choose to proceed under the circumstances. [/quote]

You don't speak for all jews, FYI. My son is Jewish despite lack of matrilineal descent.  [/quote]

Sorry, I didn't mean to suggest that your son isn't 100% Jewish or speak for anyone. When I say "traditional" I mean that as a stand-in for "halacha" i.e. Jewish legal tradition, followed in different ways and to different degrees by Orthodox (and arguably Conservative) Jewish communities. On the other hand, Reform Judaism and other Liberal Jewish traditions view halacha / traditional Jewish law as more of a jumping-off point or gateway for understanding rather than a set of rules, and do not accept "Jewish law" in the prescriptive sense. Reform Judaism certainly accepts patrilineal descent.

My point is that under this -- let's call it "strict constructionist" perspective, so long as there is matrilineal descent, he is Jewish, and meeting the halachik criteria is going to be a sufficient condition for establishing Judaism in all but a few outlying scenarios. (E.g. birthright trip, applying for Israeli citizenship lol.) According to that perspective, he'd be 100% Jewish -- which doesn't mean he's not Irish or German or Korean -- but it also doesn't mean he's only partly Jewish, because traditional Judaism doesn't recognize such a thing.

This is not to say at ALL that the question of "who is a Jew" is somehow definitely answered for all of us by that one model and those particular criteria. For example, according to the Reform movement's platform adopted more than 30 yeas ago, "A child of one Jewish parent, who is raised exclusively as a Jew and whose Jewish status is "established through appropriate and timely public and formal acts of identification with the Jewish faith and people" is Jewish. These acts include entry into the covenant, acquisition of a Hebrew name, Torah study, bar/bat mitzvah, and confirmation."

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