zahavasdad, I also can’t trace my ancestors further than my great-granparents:-) …it was second cousins and great uncles who are into yichus stuff who had the knowledge and abilities to trace our ancestors. I’m sure there are people who could trace the ancestors of your great-grandparents, it requires skill but I’m sure the knowledge is out there somewhere .
Anyway, my point is not how far back we can go but from where we shtam. If your great-granparents were frum Jews then they came from families whose ancestors were frum Jews or geirim… who also ended up marrying into frum families. Years ago you could rely on the fact that if your grandmother was Jewish she definitely came from Jewish ancestry. .. What ancestry are we creating today for our future generations? Safek Jewish ancestry, that’s what.
How about we focus all this energy and money on confused and struggling frum kids who don’t fit into the mold, on non-assimilated but not frum families and communities, on OTDs, etc. There are many ways where we need to strengthen our communities and help our own kids, I don’t see why kiruv needs to be done on safek Jews. Of course, for those who are searching and come to us for answers the door should always be open, but there’s no reason to run after people who intermarried for generations and it’s oftentimes impossible to know for certain where they shtam from. This secular generation is just the worst because the secular lifestyle today is simply crazy massive immorallity and besides for the Jewish ancestry question, we can’t take other stuff about people for granted today as well…