A Light For Greytowers

Kol Neshama's "A Light for Greytowers"

The Summer of 2004 marked the exciting inauguration of the Kol Neshama Film Project. This innovative program for girls ages eight to eighteen sought to inspire through Torah and filmmaking. We produced a feature-length movie musical in which the girls performed together with professional actresses from our faculty and community. Based on A Light for Greytowers, a popular young-adult novel, this Jewish "A Little Princess" story conveys the beauty of Torah values while being funny, moving and provocative.

This thrilling musical adventure follows Miriam Aronowitch from Czarist Russia to Victorian England where she and her mother, Anya, have taken refuge from the Cossack pogroms. When Anya becomes critically ill, however, twelve-year-old Miriam finds herself abandoned in an English orphanage — appropriately named Greytowers — and at the mercy of its cruel matron, Miss Agatha Grimshaw. Only the strength of her faith, imbued in her by her beloved mother, enables her to withstand the torments and bleakness of Greytowers and to rekindle the light of Judaism in the hearts of her young companions.