sentences:  The propriety of assimilation, and various paths toward it were among the earliest internal debates of the emancipation era, including whether and to what extent Jews should relinquish their right to uniqueness in return for civic equality.These debates initially took place within the diaspora, a population with a revered historical Biblical homeland, but without a state of their own for nearly 2,000 years.Jewish academics in the nineteenth century partook in social scientific studies concerning anti-Semitic notions of Jewish degeneration.