Adopted Great Great-Grandmother
Question
hello so im very confused about weather im jewish or not, so on my mothers side my grandmother swears to the upmost degree that were jewish and even her brother is a practicing jew, (sorry if that sounds offensive). she claims that we have been jewish as far as we go back, but her grandmother (my grandmothers grandmother) was adopted from germany in the 1800’s and no records exist. she says that she was jewish from birth, my mother and her sister(my aunt) have hebrew names and my cousins (my aunts children) have hebrew names and have had there bar mitzvahs in israel. my mother says that her grandmother was a lutheran. im very confused and it feels very disingenuous to claim that im jewish with that much doubt.
Answers
Judaism follows a matrilineal line. That means that a person is Jewish if their mother is Jewish and there is an unbroken female line. If, however, a female converted to Judaism all children born after the conversion are Jewish. But this is only if the conversion was done under the auspices of a recognized Orthodox Jewish court of law. In your case, that would require finding some kind of documented proof that your grandmother’s great-grandmother converted. Personally, I would suggest that you ask your great-uncle to see what kind of historical information he has.
Best wishes from the AskTheRabbi.org Team