Beginning in 1882, Ashkenazi Jewish migrants from the Russian Empire fled to Ottoman Palestine in a series of waves to escape rising anti-Semitism, encouraged by Perez Smolenskin's suggestion that Jews make aliyah to Israel in large movements.[2] Smolenskin's urging of European Jews could be seen as a precursor to Theodor Herzl's Zionism.[2] It is not known if the growth in nuance for homosexuality began with any of the early Russian settlers, as the territory from which they had migrated had largely been populated with homophobic cultural traits; however, as Jewish Russians were only recently beginning to integrate into mainstream Russian society away from the Pale of Settlement [citation needed], views on homosexuality likely sharply differed between Jewish intellectuals and religious clerics when migrating to, and establishing the agricultural settlements in the area.