Does this argument destroy the matriarchal principle in Judaism?

You see, that's just Orthodox's view. There are other movements within Judaism.

No.

The question whether in the more ancient biblical times (prior to Ezra) we went according to the father is questionable - there are good reasons to say yes and there are good reasons to say no. I have read tons about this but I'm not in the mood for halachic debates.

The point is this: It doesn't matter one bit for a very simple reason - the Sanhedrin had the authority to change it if it so desired. God gave much of the authority of how to run tribes to the us the Jewish people. If we decided it goes through the mother - God "follows along" - not because He has to of course, but because He "decided", so to speak, to hand in the authority to our people. This is just as much a principal in Oral Torah as anything else. In fact, it is the whole point. The covenant doesn't break either way. Baruch HaShem! We're back in our land, are we not?

PS. Why do care? You're the one trying to turn us into a religion, no? Of course that doesn't explain how come there are millions of athiest Jews, how come we share history and ancestry, and how come you would add in a secular athiest Jew to fill a minyan and not a believing observant Gentile, but..I guess ignoring all that makes you feel better.

The author of the article is completely clueless and tries to use English principles to understand Hebrew text! Here is one laughable example:

"The common Rabbinic interpretation of this is that the prohibition in the Torah contains the ambiguous lower-case "he" who is the object of the verb "turn." "

Really? Lower case "he"? There is no upper or lower case in Hebrew- tryign to create a "lower case he" which he calls ambiguous is a pure fiction invented by him to try and justify his attack on halachah. Firther more, he ignore many previous examples in the Torah that illustrate matrilineal descent determines Judaism while patrilineal descent determines tribal identity. Aside fromt he passage in Devarim he discusses where else do we see matrilineal descent being the determinant?

Try Avraham- the very first Jew! Where do we see it with Avraham? Well lets look at Avraham's marriage history and children from them:

His first son, Ishmael, is from Hagar. Ishmael is NOT considered Jewish since Hagar never adopted Avraham's religion. If patrilineal descent applied Ishmael would have been considered Jewish.

His second son, Yotzchak, From Sarah IS considered Jewish since Sarah fully embraced the same beliefs as Avraham

Avrahams 3-8th children were Zimran, Jokshan, Medan, Midian and Shuah from Keturah. She never adopted Avraham's beliefs fully and these children were sent away as not being Jewish. If it went by patrilineal descent then all of them would have been Jewish!

We see it in the children of Yitzchak also. Esav and Ya'akov both have the same parents and thus both would be considered Jewish. But Esav married women that were idol worshippers and thus none of his children were considered Jewish. If it went by patrilineal descent then all of them should have been considered Jewish!

He also tries to discount all the traditional understandings of Ezra to try and force his view onto the Tanakh. The reality is that for millenia Jews have had the same understanding of Ezra- the men sent away their non-Jewish wives and their non-Jewish children. If patrilineal descent applied, then the children woudl have been considered Jewish regardless of the religion of the mothers, and rather than sending them away the men would have been obligated to teach them and bring them back to Judaism. The fact that the author of the article has a big enough ego to ignore thousands of years of Jewish interpretations to try and claim he is right just shows his hubris, not his knowledge.

In short- the site reads like the site of a not so learned charlatan that is desperate to try and sell himself as an expert but fails miserably and would only appear learned to the uneducated!

No

There is a baseline failure by the writer to understand the meaning of the Halakha.

The key to understand is that "matrilineality" is a smelly red herring.

It is not about matrilineality -- it is about birth of the child into its family and into its nation.

A valid Jewish marriage is one "according to the laws of Moses and Israel" -- ie: BOTH participants must accept those laws -- ie: BOTH participants must be Jews (whether by conversion or birth is not important).

The pairing of a Jew and a non-Jew therefore has no Jewish status --

therefore, the father has no Jewishly legal claim on the child.

Therefore -- the child of a Jewish woman is definitionaly born within her family's Jewish household,

and likewise -

the child of a non-Jewish woman is definitionaly born outside of the Jewish nation.

Any Jewish father who makes the claim to force the child of a non-Jewish woman into the Jewish nation is therefore essentialy guilty of kidnapping.

As for the child him/her self --- then like any other non-Jew, he is free to enter the Jewish people according to the laws for entering into the Jewish people.

If the non-Jewish mother is interested in her child being part of the Jewish people, then she must first enter the Jewish people.

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EDIT

to your aditional details --

The final Halakhic argument is simply that the Halakha is that the child of a mixed relationship is defined according to the mother.

Therefore, there is at least two thousand years of presumption of error against the writer of the article.

But --

My argument in explanation of the Halakha, in case you missed it,

is that since there was no valid Jewish marriage, the alleged father has no valid Halakhic claim to the child.

He has humanitarian obligations to the child and mother - but no claim.

The author of the article misses because every Biblical argument he can possibly bring comes from valid mariages.

In a valid marriage, the wife leaves her parents' household and becomes part of the husband's household.

Meanwhile the counter point from Ezrah-Nehemiah is precisely that the Jews who had taken foreign women in Babylon against Jewish law (presumably under some "secular" Babylonian marriage law) are required to send them off -- they have no right to take them or to their children.

Ezra and Nehemiah determine Jewishness should be determined by the mother