Dawn: Chapter 2 Summary & Analysis

Elisha is 18 years old. Gad recruited him, brought him to Palestine, and “made [him] a terrorist.” They’d met in Paris, where Elisha had gone directly from the Buchenwald concentration camp. He could have gone home, but he knew his parents were dead and that his hometown was in Russian hands. Instead, a rescue committee sent him to a youth camp in Normandy and then set him up with an apartment and French lessons in Paris.

Elisha’s goal was to study philosophy at the Sorbonne. He wanted to understand what he’d experienced at the hands of God and man in the concentration camp. After those experiences, he was driven to understand where God can be found—“in suffering or in rebellion?” And what makes a person most human—submission or refusal? Elisha hoped that the study of philosophy would answer his questions and set him free from his memories.

However, Elisha’s plans are never realized. One evening there’s an unexpected knock on his door, and he opens it to find a tall, tanned young man in a raincoat. He has unruly hair, a firm mouth, and warm eyes. The man lets himself into the apartment and tells Elisha that he knows everything about him. He asks Elisha if he is “attached” to his future. Elisha is unsettled and asks the man to identify himself. The man says he is Gad. His utterance sounds “cabalistic,” like the voice of God.

Gad tells Elisha that he would like him to “give me your future.” Having grown up Hasidic, Elisha heard stories about a mysterious divine messenger called Meshulah. Frightened, Elisha asks Gad who he is, and Gad confirms Elisha’s suspicions by saying, “I am a messenger.” Elisha believes he must sacrifice whatever Gad asks of him. When he asks Gad what he will do with Elisha’s future, Gad replies that he will make it “an outcry […] of despair and then of hope.”

Gad declines a seat and, smoking nonstop, talks throughout the night while staring intently at Elisha with fiery eyes. It reminds Elisha of being a child, listening to the grizzled master tell stories from the Cabala. But Gad talks about the effort to create an independent Jewish homeland in Palestine. A group he calls “the Movement” is struggling against the British colonial government—it’s only a hundred Jewish freedom fighters against 100,000 British. It’s the first time Elisha has heard a story about Jews being unafraid, even causing others to fear.

Gad asks Elisha to join this struggle for the freedom of Israel. Elisha’s family weren’t Zionists, so the concreteness of Gad’s stories fascinates him. Gad seems like a messenger summoning Jewish people into a promising future, where they won’t be persecuted or exiled. As a gray dawn breaks outside, Elisha accepts Gad’s offer.

In the present, the Radio Jerusalem announcer talks about David ben Moshe’s impending execution. Though many around the world have protested and petitioned, the hanging is going forward. Gad paces in agitation, then searches the radio dial for the Voice of Freedom broadcast. Palestine’s Jews always stop what they are doing at a quarter past eight to listen to the young woman’s mysterious, riveting voice. Only Gad, Elisha, and a few others know that the voice belongs to Ilana, Gad’s girlfriend.

Ilana speaks of David ben Moshe’s and John Dawson’s executions tomorrow at dawn. Though the two men will die at the same moment, there will be a wide gap between their experiences—David will die as a hero and John as a victim. When Ilana speaks of John Dawson, Elisha feels she is speaking of him, too. He had wanted to understand human nature, he reflects, and instead he is taking part in causing another’s death. When Elisha glances in the mirror, he is frightened by the sight of his own eyes. When he was a child, his grizzled master had told him that the creature Death “is all eyes.”