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Assuming someone who discovers through rigorous genealogical methods, that down their maternal lineage one woman was Jewish. To add to the question, let's assume that this maternal ancestor lived in the 15th century. I know that as long as the person has a Jewish maternal ancestress, this person is Jewish, and I assume that this is the rule regardless of the distance between the person and the Jewish ancestor?

If so, could there be potentially millions of halakhic Jews who due to distant relation have next to 0% chance of knowing this fact?

I would like to know if there are any texts that discuss or briefly address such a scenario.

Thanks

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    This is indeed the halachic concept. In reality, we usually require someone whose family has been outside of the Jewish community to do a "L'chumra" conversion out of doubt (suppose someone sometime over the last 600 years was adopted) but your understanding is otherwise correct. In fact, there are 16 million "known" Jews in the world, and probably another 25 million "bnei anusim" or descendants of forced converts out of Judaism living in Latin America who are Jewish and don't know it.
    – יהושע ק
    Commented Oct 16 at 8:44
  • Here is a summary of some major rabbinic figures' rulings on this type of scenario: sephardimhope.com/welcoming-back-the-anusim
    – יהושע ק
    Commented Oct 16 at 9:19
  • @יהושעק Well, 16 million people estimated to be part of any religious group that self-identifies as Jewish, one example being the Hebrew Christian movement. Considering the population of non-Observant Jewish communities, and the average intermarriage rates of men in all self-identified Jewish communities regardless of halachic validity, and disregarding “Jewish” movements that are recognized as false by everyone except Wikipedia (e.g., again, the Hebrew Christian movement), the number is likely closer to around 7-8 million halachic Jews who are aware of their Jewishness, if not even less.
    – Qwertrl
    Commented Oct 16 at 15:46
  • @Qwertrl there are about 7 million Rabbanut-vetted Jews in Israel alone. Including all of the diaspora, the 16 million figure seems realistic, with maybe 20-22 million as a "big tent" figure (people with a Jewish father "raised Jewish" in heterodox movements for example)
    – יהושע ק
    Commented Oct 17 at 19:15
  • @יהושעק On a purely logical basis, I’d agree, if I didn’t know as a fact that the 16 million figure includes anyone and everyone who identifies as a Jew, regardless of that claim’s legitimacy. The 16 million is the big-tent figure. The real number of Jews must be significantly smaller.
    – Qwertrl
    Commented Oct 20 at 0:34

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