Jewish Functional Communities

Author: Abdelwahab Elmessiri

The term "functional community" was coined by the author, based on similar terms in Western sociology, to describe human groups that are brought in from outside society or recruited from within it, and then assigned various functions that the majority of society members cannot perform for different reasons. These reasons include that these functions may be disgraceful ("usury - prostitution") or distinctive ("judiciary - translation") or of special sensitivity and security nature ("king's guard - physician - ambassadors - spies"). Members of these groups are then defined by their narrow, specific function, not by their broad, complex humanity (hence the name). This book is an attempt to offer a new reading of the position of Jewish communities in Western civilization and the close relationship between all of this and the emergence of the Jewish question, then Zionism as an idea, ideology, and political movement, and finally as a functional Zionist state.