Jewish question

The Jewish question was a wide-ranging debate in 19th- and 20th-century Europe that pertained to the appropriate status and treatment of Jews. The debate, which was similar to other "national questions", dealt with the civil, legal, national, and political status of Jews as a minority within society, particularly in Europe during the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. The debate began with Jewish emancipation in western and central European societies during the Age of Enlightenment and after the French Revolution. The debate's issues included legal and economic Jewish disabilities (such as Jewish quotas and segregation), Jewish assimilation, and Jewish Enlightenment. The expression has been used by antisemitic movements from the 1880s onwards, culminating in the Holocaust (1941–45), specifically a Nazi plan called the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question". Similarly, the expression was used by proponents for, and opponents of, the establishment of an autonomous Jewish homeland or a sovereign Jewish state, leading to the state of Israel in 1948.