Watch Mosaic’s Dramatic Reading of “The Dawning of the Day”

A simple Jerusalem laundryman is tested by a vanished voice from his past and the destruction of his treasured way of life

Set in and around Jerusalem’s famous shuk, and featuring three top-notch actors playing multiple characters each, The Dawning of the Day—Mosaic’s 2022 year-end dramatic reading, adapted from the classic novel by Haim Sabato—brings to the screen a way of life that no longer exists.

Ezra Siman Tov is a character the equal of Tevye the Dairyman—if Tevye came from a Syrian Jewish family rather than a Russian one. Happily ensconced in a pious daily routine, Ezra’s life is upended when his family decides to throw him a feast for his 60th birthday and, amid the revelry, an old friend shows up uninvited. Does the friend mean well? What are the lawyers poking around the old shuk doing? And what’s the voice that starts to appear in the distance?