The so-called Jewish question encompasses the issues and resolutions, surrounding the historic unequal civil, legal and national status of minority Ashkenazi Jews, particularly in Europe. The first issues discussed and debated by societies, politicians and writers in western and central Europe began with the Age of Enlightenment and the French Revolution and included issues of legal and economic Jewish disabilities, equality, Jewish emancipation and Jewish Enlightenment. Issues including assimilation within the Diaspora and Zionism continued into the twentieth century.

The term thus became closely associated with periods of increased antisemitism in the 1880s, as well as the struggle to establish a Jewish state. According to Holocaust scholar Lucy Dawidowicz, the term "Jewish Question" as introduced in western Europe was a neutral expression for the negative attitude toward the apparent and persistent singularity of the Jews as a people on the background of the rising political nationalisms and new nation-states. Dawidowicz writes that "the histories of Jewish emancipation and of European antisemitism are replete with proffered 'solutions to the Jewish question.'" By far the most infamous use of this expression was by the Nazis in the early- and mid- twentieth century, culminating in the implementation of their Final Solution to the Jewish question during World War II.

An early use of the expression "Jewish question" appeared during the Jew Bill of 1753 debates in England. According to Otto Dov Kulka of Hebrew University, the term became widespread in the 19th century when it was used in discussions about Jewish emancipation in Germany (Judenfrage).

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