Boaz Yakin​’s most recent graph­ic nov­el, Jerusalem: A Fam­i­ly Por­trait, illus­trat­ed by Nick Bertozzi, will be pub­lished lat­er this month. He will be blog­ging here all week for Jew­ish Book Coun­cil and MyJew­ish­Learn­ing.Edi­tor’s Note: The views expressed by Vis­it­ing Scribes are their own.

It seems to me that it’s hard for a feel­ing, empa­thet­ic per­son to know where to place him­self in the midst of con­flict. Since most peo­ple pos­sess some degree of feel­ing and empa­thy, in order to live with them­selves they don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly divorce them­selves from these sens­es as they make deci­sions as to how and where to direct them. These deci­sions are deter­mined by a host of fac­tors — dif­fer­ent in each indi­vid­ual and situation. 

The bravest among us, of whom there are few, coura­geous­ly allow their empa­thet­ic sense to extend out­ward in a man­ner that gen­er­ous­ly encom­pass­es a wide vari­ety of peo­ple, per­spec­tives and feel­ings that might be in vio­lent, seem­ing­ly intractable oppo­si­tion to one anoth­er— and even more coura­geous­ly allow their prac­ti­cal behav­ior and deci­sions to be strong­ly influ­enced by that under­stand­ing. The least brave, who num­ber many, allow their empa­thy to encom­pass their fam­i­ly, their friends, their tribe— how­ev­er far they choose to extend the net— and then shut them­selves off to every­one and every­thing else in order to jus­ti­fy behav­ior that is born of the most prim­i­tive fears, anger, and desires. The rest of us, well, we live some­where in the mid­dle, con­stant­ly extend­ing and with­draw­ing our empa­thy and under­stand­ing like a snail pok­ing its anten­nae out of its shell as we try to bal­ance our desire for open­ness, broth­er­hood and free­dom with our anx­i­eties, anger and fears.

Jerusalem, a graph­ic nov­el I wrote, inspired by the mul­ti­tude of myths, sto­ries, dia­tribes and mus­ings I have been exposed to through­out my life by fam­i­ly, friends, ene­mies, and teach­ers, is an attempt to explore this strug­gle in oth­ers and with­in myself.