Thank you everyone who has answered so far. GA’s for everyone.
@Call_Me_Jay Many years ago I was talking to a Black woman I worked with and she was telling me how it bothers her that she doesn’t know her roots, her national background, doesn’t know much about her grandparents or further back, and doesn’t have traditions from her ancestry. She wanted those things not only for herself, but especially for her sons. My response was I don’t know anything about the generation before my grandparents, and I think a lot of Jews don’t. We know we were hated, many of us very poor, and we have history books to tell us what was happening in our former countries.
We do have traditions in the religion, in Judaism, but not so much with a country, it’s more regions like Eastern Europe or the Middle East, etc. She was shocked. She thought all white people know so much about their families back 10 generations and have strong identification with the specific countries before coming to America.
About your friend, if she was born and raised in Mexico her Mexican identity is very similar or the same as our American identity. My husband’s father was born and raised in Mexico and his parents were from Tel Aviv and Haifa and spoke Hebrew and Arabic in the house (In Mexico) but my FIL feels a strong identity with Mexico. My husband also was born and raised in Mexico, but he was raised Catholic and converted to Judaism when we were engaged. If I had to guess, his strongest identity is being Mexican, but now I wonder. He feels gratitude to the US, and I would say patriotism too. He’s both. I’m not sure where he would rank Judaism in that hierarchy.