The Ask Yahoo! question for today is Why is Judaism based on maternal lineage? The response begins:

It’s been said that Judaism is “more like a nationality than like other religions,” because traditionally, a person must be born Jewish or go through a lengthy conversion process. The strictest definition of a Jew is one whose mother was Jewish.

And that, my friends, is why I am Jewish. Yes, I was raised Unitarian Universalist. Yes, I am an atheist today. But I will always be Jewish. I don’t even have a specific national heritage - my ancestors were among those who settled in eastern Europe (like the starring characters of Fiddler on the Roof), but I’m not Polish or Russian or anything like that. I’m just Jewish.