AviraDeArah, many years ago, when I was still a teenager, so we are talking over twenty years ago, a girl worked in my family business. She was from Russia and supposedly a baalei teshuva. But we found out later that due to an error she was really non-Jewish. So when I asked someone who knew about the case why she still dressed and acted Jewish and stayed within the community they claimed that they invested too much money to just let her go…thinking about this I get mad! I have no clue what ended up with that girl. This was over twenty years ago!
There was a story in Hamodia about a Russian teenage boy whose mother, who was an alcoholic, claimed that she’s Jewish and therefore was allowed to attend avJewish camp. He wanted to travel to a yeshiva in England but for whatever reason that I can’t remember now his mother didn’t give permission for him to go. However they had a yeshiva ready for him and would he be able to travel to England he’d be accepted into Yeshiva simply because his alcoholic mother claimed that she was a Jew. The article clearly enunciated that point that they had no way of verifying his Jewishness so they checked with a Rav who ruled that they could believe his mother…
Recently there was a story of a baal teshuva who found out after already having einklach that he was a non-Jew! Since he’s a make his family didn’t have to undergo conversion but can you imagine a believing he’s Jewish, wife wife marrying him as a Jew, bringing up a Jewish family… I have no doubt, as generations have moved further from their Jewish ancestry, that many people assume they are Jewish, whether due to adoption, or their grandparents converting through the Reform movement, that such stories will be much more frequent if this “baal teshuva movement” does not stop.
Whom are we trying to bring into our communities? The secular world today is worlds away from the society it was 15+ years ago. This has to stop.
We have unfortunately lost millions of nefashos throughout the millenias, Jews taken into slavery, forced conversions, the Enlightenment, assimilation, etc. The Jewish nation has survived and will continue to survive because Hashem promised us we will stay a nation despite losing so many of our people. We daven that Hashem should send Moshiach and return all the lost people to our nation. From our part, is not right to mess with a situation that cannot be rectified at this time