The musical comes on the heels of an especially busy winter. Cold and pouring rain couldn't keep the crowd of approximately 400 from making their way through the school's inviting halls for VIP Day in early February. GHA librarian, Dianne Braun, was on hand during the opening reception to personally thank attendees for the 179 books they had donated to the library in honor of their Very Important Children. The day's program hosted VIPs in classrooms with children, and in the auditorium for each grades live musical performance. As the auditorium went dark for the finale, filmed images of the entire GHA family singing the school song "The Next Fifty Years," lit the stage, and voices swelled as the children—and the audience—found themselves singing along.

Some of these same guests returned to GHA two weeks later for the always moving First Grade Siddur Presentation, a rite-of-passage celebrating a significant milestone in a child's Jewish education. Having finished teaching the children how to read and write the Alef-Bet, the teachers presented their students with their own parent-decorated siddurim.

Others from the VIP crowd returned to school that night to join the second-graders and their teachers for a Shabbat dinner. Once again, GHA succeeded in bringing its diverse community together under one roof; good food, good company, and well-delivered Dvar Torah made it all the more memorable an evening.

Greenfield Hebrew Academy is one of Federation's local beneficiary agencies, and received an allocation of $422,139 in FY04.