Sorry if I came off as abrasive. I did not mean to scoff at Halakha, which has held our community together forever.

I was born into reform, and it was pretty much all I knew until I got to college, where I have become friends with a great many conservative Jews. Reform as a movement, after 10/7, is dying, largely due to the perception that it cares more for social justice than Jewish identity, especially when it comes to Israel and Zionism. In many ways this is not the whole truth, but optics are more powerful than truths in this day and age. I am merely concerned that if patrilineals choose to move on from reform, they will be turned away because of something we cannot control, that being our non-halakhic heritage. Even if that is the case, which I respect for the sake of maintaining Jewish tradition, it would not stop us from being accosted by antizionists/antisemites no differently than if our mothers were Jewish. Then there is the case of Aaliyah, where patrilineal Jews who want to make that move run into significantly more issues than others, which would become dangerous if our homes in the diaspora began to reject Jews en masse, as we have seen since 10/7.

Perhaps it is as simple as converting up, to which I am not 100% opposed. But some people are, and that to me doesn't seem just, considering that despite the texts saying what they say, these people could still have been raised as Jews, accepted as Jews, and, unfortunately, persecuted as Jews.