High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! A homeland for the Jewish people was perceived as an alternative political solution to the "Jewish Question", and developed in contrast to Jewish assimilation and in response to continued xenophobic antisemitism toward Ashkenazi Jews in Eastern Europe. In the late 19th century, Theodor Herzl, later hailed as the founder of the Zionist movement, envisioned a Jewish state, which he described in detail in his book by that name, Der Judenstaat. By the Balfour Declaration of 1917, the government of the United Kingdom became the first major world power to endorse as an objective the establishment in Palestine of a "national home for the Jewish people".