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If you have a family tradition that "we are Jewish," along the maternal lineage, then you are Jewish. If your mother is Jewish by birth -- even if neither she nor you ever practiced the Jewish religion -- you are still a Jew. Reform Judaism states that a Jew is someone who has one Jewish parent of either gender, OR if they have converted under the auspices of any branch of Judaism (Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist, Traditional, Renewal, Orthodox). Other branches of Judaism recognize that you are born Jewish only if your mother is a Jew through birth or conversion, or if you yourself converted.

If your mother is a Jew by birth or conversion, you are also a Jew, even if you never keep a single mitzvah in your life. Your children, however, must have a Jewish mother in order to be born Jewish.

By the way -- if a Jewish woman abandons her Judaism and actively practices another religion, and gives birth during this time in her life, the baby is not Jewish. Even if the mother later returns to her Jewish roots (called making t'shuvah/return), the baby still has to be converted in order to be considered Jewish. And if a born-Jewish person dies while in a state of apostasy (actively living according to another religion), they are not considered a Jew in death, but are buried outside the Jewish cemetary.

However, I am a belief that a person with a strong jewish lineage cannot become unjewish, and you can at any time, come back to the religion.

Hello there, Raito.
I see your point too, Neuf.

Technically a person is Jewish if their mother is Jewish. The father, if he is Jewish, determines the child's tribal affiliation -- Kohein (direct descendant of the Levite known as Aharon, or Aaron, the brother of Moshe/Moses); Leivi (Levite), a direct descendant of Leivi/Levi, the third son of Ya'akov/Jacob, but not of Aharon; or Yisrael, every other Jew. If a person's mother is Jewish, then the person is fully Jewish, not a half-Jew, even if the person's father is not a Jew. If the person's mother is not a Jew, then the person is not a Jew either, regardless of whether the father is Jewish. However, the person with the Jewish father and non-Jewish mother can say that they are of some Jewish heritage. There is no such thing as a half-Jew.

A baby's conversion has nothing to do with its understanding, and everything to do with its heritage. A person who is not born Jewish is not a Jew by heritage. However, they can become Jewish if they convert, themselves -- or if their parents have them converted (adopted into the family of Yisrael). In the latter case, the child is considered a sofek Jew, a "maybe Jew." Only when the child reaches the age of bar mitzvah (13 for boys) or bat mitzvah (12 for girls) can they confirm that they want their conversion to stand and that they want to consider themselves bound to the mitzvot (the 613 commandments incumbent upon all Jews). If they don't confirm it, they're not a Jew. If they do confirm it, they're a Jew.

Halachah -- Jewish law -- does not recognize a half-Jew. It only recognizes whether a person has converted, or whether a person's mother is Jewish, or not.

I have been wondering that for a very long time! I assumed that's how it went, but I always wondered if I was actually right.

Thanks for the information.

And Neuf, Harry Potter, for some reason, is extremely World War II/Facist Germany to me. Especially the last one with all the muggle registration and the judgement of lineage done by the ministry. I wonder if that was something she chose to do? To be reminisent of the people persecuted in the Holocaust or perhaps specifically Jews...

Yes, J. K. Rowling consciously chose to parallel the Nazi movement with the Death Eaters and their ilk. Even down to Voldemort's being a half-blood. There's a persistent legend that Hitler was part Jewish. He wasn't, in fact, but the rumor is so popular that I'm sure it influenced her treatment of Voldemort. Nurmengard is almost certainly supposed to suggest Nuremberg by similarity of sound. Azkaban is supposed to look like the Nazi death camps, and the restrictions on Muggle-born wizards are definitely supposed to recall the restrictions placed on Jews throughout most of Europe during that awful time. Rowling did a great job of it all, and the movies are doing a great job of being true to that vision.

She's British. They saw the Holocaust up close, and it understandably freaked them out. Even those who were born after that awful time still feel its effects in their parents and grandparents, in their stories that they tell, and in the memories they don't share too.