For centuries, European society had sought to find an appropriate means for addressing the so-called Jewish Question, the relationship between the Christian majority and the Jewish minority. When various remedies—including emancipation, assimilation, separation, and overt persecution and discrimination (in the form of state-sponsored pogroms and other forms of anti-Semitism)— failed to "solve" the problem, a growing number of Jews turned to political Zionism and independent statehood.
Historical Dictionary of Israel. Bernard Reich David H. Goldberg. Edited by Jon Woronoff..