Acceptance of the status quo has not only kept peace between Israel and Muslim authorities, but it has also allowed Israel to preserve its own fragile balance between religion and state among the Jewish population, particularly in areas of Shabbat and holiday observances, kashrut, family status, education and the military. So, for example, in some cities buses run on Shabbat and in some they don't. Compromises were made back in the early years, and once that happened, things were kept basically the same, for the sake of peace. It was all about finding some middle ground that everyone could live with, even if no one was completely happy with the arrangement. At its best, status quo allows the pot to simmer just long enough for fresh ideas to germinate. It should not be a prescription for eternal ossification. In some cases adjustments to status quo policies need to be made for compelling moral reasons, especially regarding basic human rights, but allowing Jewish prayer atop the Temple Mount has never been cause to upset the status quo - until now.
Prime Minister Netanyahu traveled all the way to Jordan to assure King Abdullah that he would preserve the status quo, but will he? Watch out for what happens on Passover, when right wing extremists will undoubtedly try to stir the pot by sacrificing a goat in the shadow of Al Aqsa. It's been tried before, just last year, in fact. The police have stopped these attempts in the past, But now the inmates are running the asylum. The police are supervised by Itamar Ben Gvir, the right wing zealot who has already made his first official visit atop the Mount, and the Temple Mount movement is planning for a robust return of Jews to the site. And this year, Passover, Easter and Ramadan all coincide. Circle the first week of April on your calendars and stock up on canned goods. Things could get very tense around the world.
Still, there is no Hebrew word for "status quo."
And on the very same front page, another word lacks an authentic Hebrew translation.
In the red-highlighted story, about a transgender child being removed from a religious school because of parental pressure, you can see that the term "transgender" is also transliterated directly from English to Hebrew. (Read the entire sorry Ha'aretz story here). There is no Hebrew word yet for "transgender," just an English loanword, like טלפון, ג’ינס and ביי ("telephone," "jeans" and "bye") and like "status quo."
In this situation, though, I think I'd rather not see the Israeli language authorities take a crack at creating an organic Hebrew word for trans, considering that the best they've been able to do with LGBTQ is "homo." I'm happy just keeping things as they are. Let English carry the loan-load on this one.
The fact that the Hebrew language can't handle either gender fluidity or historical flexibility, (which maintaining the status quo ironically requires), suggests that Judaism's sacred language might have a problem with fluidity in general. The Hebrew word for fluidity is נְזִילוּת ("n'zilut"), which comes from "nazal," "to ooze." There's another word as well: זרימה, ("zrima,"), which comes from the word "zerem," a biblical term for downpour (see Psalm 77:18). Somewhere in between those two words, in between the oozing and the gushing, between stagnation and revolution, there is a simple, flowing stream - a fluidity that recognizes that nothing is static and unchanging, not regarding gender nor ownership of sacred spaces. Because of that, we need to be respectful of people who pray in different ways, for whom the very same location might have a very different history - different but also holy.
Fluidity is a key to understanding how, over the coming few weeks, the Torah cycle takes us from the blood-soaked banks of the Nile to the rising and ebbing tides of the Red Sea, and from the depths of winter's frost to the first oozing of sap on Tu B'Shevat.
In some ways, Israelis have always been very good at going with the flow. But with the current government's approach to both the Temple Mount and LGBTQ, and so many other areas, there has been a considerable hardening of the arteries. That needs to change quickly. As Pharaoh discovered, nothing good comes from a hardened heart.
Which brings me to Fauda, a show that thrives on fluidity. Having binge-watched the fourth season this week, I come away amazed at how interchangeable the Jewish and Arab characters are, as they flow from language to language, from tragedy to tragedy, from love to revenge and back to love again. The great tragedy is that the the fighting protagonists can never see, just for a second, just how similar they are to those they are killing, and in those fleeting moments when they might see it, they are betrayed by those who don't, whose hearts have been hardened beyond repair. The way the show flows from hatred to love, from enemy to friend, and from death to birth, might present the illusion of hope that the cycle can be broken. But the only ones broken in the end are the people themselves,exhausted from their endless battles. Even the births seem tragic because there is little hope but for a repetition of the cycle of stuck-ness, of an eternal, unending, unbending status-quo, and not the good kind of status quo, the one borne of inertia rather than compromise. As if we needed more proof, art imitated life last night in the streets of Jenin, where an israeli raid resulted in the deaths of nine Palestinians.
But transcending a plot that is replete with tragedy, there is one glimmer of hope. This Israeli show that glides effortlessly from Arabic to Hebrew, from Beirut to Tel Aviv, is Netflix's number one show in Lebanon and highly rated throughout the Arab world.
Everyone is watching. and that counts for something. On some level, we're all speaking the same language.
That portends a fluidity that just might upend the "statoos quo" some day, And it just might save us all. | 
