Welcome to Gaia! ::

Judaism is many things: nation, ethnicity, family, descent group, religion (ritual), religion (belief), religion (code of ethics). However, it is not a race. There are Jews of all races and nations. Connie Chung is Jewish. Sammy Davis, Jr. was Jewish, may he rest in peace. There are entire communities of Jews in India, such as the Bene Israel of Cochin. Most people in the US have heard of Jews from Germany, Hungary, Russia, Poland, and so on, and many even assume that these are the majority of the world's Jews (often referred to as Ashkenazi Jews, after the region of Germany and part of France, called Ashkenaz).

That's not actually the case. The majority of the world's Jews are Sephardi. That is, their immediate ancestors are from the Iberian peninsula, the Mediteranean, the Middle East, Asia, and North Africa. Some are Teimani (Jews of Yemen, mostly black and Arab by race), some are Ethiopian (the Beta Israel, all black), some are Iraqi (white Arab or black Arab).

HUGE communities of Jews exist that are of every race. There are even some communities in Japan and China that are Jewish.

Connection to Israel? We pray, three times every day, for the Temple at Jerusalem to be rebuilt so that all Jews can return to Israel in the Messianic age. We're still waiting for that to happen. It's our homeland. We don't all live there, but the Jewish soul yearns to be there. I don't feel a huge connection to the modern state of Israel; but then, I don't feel a huge connection to the country of my birth and residence, either. I do feel a huge connection to the land itself, to the people, and to the hope that we'll all get to be there with Mashiach on the throne within my lifetime.

You're second generation? That's impressive...

According to my grandmother, our family has been here since the Puritans. I'm also a sixteenth Cherokee, a smattering of Irish and Scottish, AND Spanish! A true mutt.
I've always just sort of thought of myself as Catherine. I may have white skin and other Scandinavian features, but I am so many things that I can't really fathom relating to one particular group of people. Israel excepts new people into it's family, and these people don't have to be of Middle Eastern descent or eastern European, they just have to have a strong desire to become a part of the family itself. That's not really the case of a race, now is it?

Haha, I can totally relate I am a mutt as well,
a quater Native American of multiple kinds, German, British, Irish.

I love the way you described it as a family thou, and I like most people like to fit in, but have always for one reason or another have troubles with it. So when people can over look things like my race, family history etc... warms my heart and gives me great loyalty to them.

Not every single Jew alive, no. However, the prayer book, which observant Jews use every day in our prayers, mentions several times that we hope/strive/pray for the rebuilding of Israel as a home for Jews; the rebuilding of the holy Temple at Jerusalem; the return of Jews to live in the land of Israel (in its Biblically mandated borders, no less but no more); and the resumption of Temple worship. If you're praying those things three times a day (at least), either you're a hypocrite, or it's actually something that you hope for.