Dawn is narrated in first person by Elisha, whose name isn’t revealed until the beginning of the second chapter. The first chapter opens in British Mandatory Palestine on an autumn evening. Elisha hears a child starting to cry somewhere.

Elisha recounts, “Tomorrow, I thought for the hundredth time, I would kill a man” (1). The man is Captain John Dawson, a hostage of the Movement. Elisha has never met Dawson and knows nothing about him other than the fact that he’s an Englishman and the enemy. Knowing that he has to execute Dawson makes Elisha miserable.

Elisha is accompanied by Gad, a fellow resistance member. Gad repeatedly reminds Elisha not to “torture himself” because it’s part of being at war.

Elisha reflects on a childhood experience, wherein he met a beggar while praying alone in the synagogue one night. When he first saw the beggar, he felt simultaneous fear and love because “a beggar might be the prophet Elijah in disguise” (3), but he could also be the Angel of Death. Elisha felt that he shouldn’t be in the synagogue much longer, because at midnight “the dead rise up from their graves and come to say their prayers” (3).