Racial conceptions of Jewish identity in Zionism

In the late 19th century, amid attempts to apply science to notions of race, some of the founders of Zionism (such as Max Nordau) sought to reformulate conceptions of Jewishness in terms of racial identity and the "race science" of the time. They believed that this concept would allow them to build a new framework for collective Jewish identity, and thought that biology might provide "proof" for the "ethnonational myth of common descent" from the biblical land of Israel.

Source: Wikipedia — Racial conceptions of Jewish identity in Zionism (CC BY-SA 4.0)