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‘An American Tail’ musical adaptation hopes its Jewish immigration story will resonate in 2023
(JTA) — Itamar Moses was 10 years old when he watched “An American Tail” at his Jewish day school in California. He was struck by the 1986 film, an animated musical about a family of Russian-Jewish mice who immigrate to America. Even though he was surrounded by Jewish classmates and teachers, he had never seen a cartoon with Jewish protagonists.
“Watching this mainstream hit American animated movie where the central character and the central family were specifically Jewish — it was unusual,” Moses told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “I think there was something that felt inclusive to us about that.”
Now a Tony Award-winning playwright, Moses has adapted the children’s classic for the stage. “An American Tail the Musical” will premiere at the Children’s Theatre Company in Minneapolis on April 25 and run through June 18. Along with writing by Moses, who won his Tony for a Broadway adaptation of the Israeli film “The Band’s Visit,” the new production features familiar songs such as “Somewhere Out There” and new music and lyrics by Michael Mahler and Alan Schmuckler (“Diary of a Wimpy Kid the Musical”). The team hopes to tour the show if it has success in Minneapolis.
The original film created by Don Bluth and Steven Spielberg follows the journey of a young, tenacious mouse named Fievel Mousekewitz. Fievel’s family lives below the human Moskowitz family in Shostka, a city in the Russian Empire, in 1885. Spielberg, who had yet to make “Schindler’s List” or widely address his Jewish family history, named the character after his maternal grandfather — Phillip or “Fievel” Posner — an immigrant from Russia.
The movie begins with the Mousekewitzes and the Moskowitzes celebrating Hanukkah when Cossacks tear through Shostka in an antisemitic pogrom, together with their animal counterparts — a battery of evil cats. The Mouskewitzes flee Europe and board a ship to America, where Papa Mouskewitz (voiced by Nehemiah Persoff) promises “there are no cats” and “the streets are paved with cheese.” But a thunderstorm at sea washes Fievel overboard, leaving his devastated parents and sister to arrive in New York City without him. Although they believe he did not survive, Fievel floats to shore in a bottle and sets out to find his family.
Of course, he quickly learns there are cats in America — along with corruption and exploitation. Fievel is sold to a sweatshop by Warren T. Rat, a cat disguised as a rat. A crooked mouse politician called Honest John (a caricature of the real Tammany Hall boss John Kelly) wanders Irish wakes, scribbling dead mice’s names in his list of “ghost votes.” But Fievel finds camaraderie with other immigrant mice rallying for freedom from the cats’ attacks and Warren T. Rat’s extortion. He befriends Italian mouse Tony and Irish mouse Bridget, who join the quest to reunite his family.
The film’s metaphors will be presented similarly in the stage version, which is also set in the 1880s, although Moses has expanded its lens on the immigrant groups that populated New York at the time. The musical will incorporate more “mice” communities, such as Chinese, Caribbean and Scandinavian mice, along with African Americans and former slaves.
A scene from rehearsal. (Kaitlin Randolph)
“An American Tail” was part of a shift in mainstream media toward Jewish representation, said Jennifer Caplan, an assistant professor of Judaic Studies at the University of Cincinnati who has studied this cultural change.
“It came out in 1986, and then ‘Seinfeld’ premiered in 1989,” Caplan told the JTA. “People point to 1989 as this moment when representations of Jews changed. There was this feeling in the late ‘80s that people were looking for new, different, possibly even more explicit representations of Jews.”
Yet despite the movie’s resonance with children like Moses, some film critics complained that it wasn’t Jewish enough. Critics Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert gave the film “two thumbs down” on a 1986 episode of their program “At The Movies,” calling it “way too depressing” for children and arguing that it “chickened out” of an explicitly Jewish story. Ebert noted that while most adults would understand the Mousekewitzes were Jewish, the word “Jewish” never appears in the film, potentially leaving young audiences in the dark.
“This seems to be a Jewish parable that doesn’t want to declare itself,” he said at the time.
Unlike in Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel “Maus,” where Jews are mice and Nazis are cats, the cat-and-mouse metaphor of “An American Tail” is expansive. The cats represent a universal force of oppression — Cossacks in Russia or capitalists in America — while the mice encompass all persecuted immigrants, regardless of their religion, ethnicity or national origin.
Caplan admitted that some might not have seen it as a Jewish story at the time.
“In 1986, we’re right at the birth of the multicultural push in American schools,” said Caplan. “You’ve got kids who are learning about the melting pot. I think if you are not looking for the coded Jewishness and you’re not familiar with it, then this just seems like a movie about immigrants.”
But Moses, who said the movie held a “mystical place” in his imagination, did not view the story’s broad allegory as a shortcoming. Instead, he saw an opportunity to pull its continuous thread for a message he hopes will feel relevant today: that while immigrants discover inequality and abuse in America, the forces of injustice are changeable, and that people can overcome life’s harsh realities through “grit and hard work and coming together.”
“That message is always timely, but definitely coming out of the last few years and the conversations that America is having about immigration,” said Moses. “I wanted to tell this story that’s really a fable, so you can get at these ideas indirectly as opposed to in a dry, didactic way.”
Jodi Eichler-Levine, a Jewish studies professor at Lehigh University, argued the tale’s success lies in being a “story of Jewish immigration that appeals to non-Jews as well” and called the movie a “fairytale about America.” It premiered 100 years after the Statue of Liberty’s dedication in 1886, amid centennial celebrations of the country’s immigration history. In the film, the statue comes alive, winking at Fievel and his sister once they find each other and look west at the vast expanse of the United States.
Itamar Moses won acclaim for adapting “The Band’s Visit” for Broadway. (Courtesy of Moses)
Whether viewers still buy into the optimistic crescendo of “An American Tail” remains to be seen. Do Americans still believe, as Moses hopes, that immigrants and oppressed peoples can unite to overthrow the tyrants of unfettered capitalism? A Gallup poll from February showed that Americans’ satisfaction with the country’s level of immigration has dropped to 28%, the lowest point in a decade.
Moses is betting that children’s theater has a way of refreshing themes adults have exhausted with political discourse. Children want to grapple with the ideas at the core of the show, he said, such as “the needs of the individual and the needs of the collective, the need to go out on your own but still remain connected to your family and your background.”
“The most successful material for kids tends to engage with real things that they’re thinking about and worrying about,” he said.
Today, another wave of families has fled Fievel’s hometown: though Shostka was part of the Russian Empire in the 19th century, it is now in the Sumy region of northeastern Ukraine. The Sumy Oblast was among the first regions stormed by Russian forces in February 2022 and continues to suffer daily shelling. Eichler-Levine expects that global refugee crises will only continue to broaden the appeal of a migration story.
“The ideas [in An American Tail] are sadly relevant for most of the planet right now, given that climate change and devastation from war are leading to another tremendous wave of global migration,” said Eichler-Levine.
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Western Countries Crack Down on Hamas Terror Threat in Europe
A flag is flown during a protest in support of Palestinians in Gaza, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, outside the European Parliament, in Strasbourg, France, Nov. 27, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Yves Herman
Western authorities are intensifying efforts to curb Hamas’s terror threat in Europe, arresting suspected operatives in Germany and imposing US sanctions on key Hamas-linked figures and organizations.
On Friday, German authorities arrested a 36-year-old man, identified as Mohammad S., at Berlin Brandenburg Airport, who is suspected of belonging to a terrorist cell that plotted attacks on Israeli and Jewish targets across the country
According to local media, he is the fourth member of a cell – three of whose members were arrested last year – with links to Hamas, and he is accused of supplying the Palestinian terrorist group with weapons.
The German federal prosecutor’s office ordered the arrest of Mohammad S. upon his return from Lebanon, after investigators found that he acquired 300 rounds of ammunition in August 2025 in preparation for potential Hamas attacks on Israeli and Jewish institutions in Germany and across Europe.
Last year, local police arrested Lebanese-born Borhan El-K, a suspected Hamas operative, after he crossed into Germany from the Czech Republic — part of an ongoing probe into the Islamist group’s network and operations across the continent.
German authorities confirmed the suspect had obtained an automatic rifle, eight Glock pistols, and more than 600 rounds of ammunition in the country before handing the weapons to Wael FM, another suspected member of the terrorist group, in Berlin.
Local law enforcement also arrested Lebanese-born Wael FM, along with two other German citizens, Adeb Al G and Ahmad I, who prosecutors say are foreign operatives for Hamas.
As part of an internationally coordinated investigation into a global terrorist network linked to the Islamist group, German authorities uncovered evidence that it had smuggled weapons into the country for potential attacks in Europe.
The United States is also stepping up efforts to counter the threat of Hamas-linked terrorism in Europe, including imposing renewed sanctions on the group and its operatives.
Last week, the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designated UK-based pro-Palestinian activist Zaher Birawi, an alleged senior Hamas member, as a supporter of a Hamas-linked group, freezing his US assets and barring Americans from doing business with him.
The US government also sanctioned Birawi’s organization, the Popular Conference for Palestinians Abroad (PCPA), identifying him as one of its founding members and a senior official.
According to the Treasury Department, the PCPA “does not only work with, and in support of, Hamas — it operates at Hamas’s behest.”
Birawi also runs the Palestinian Forum in Britain (PFB) and holds leadership positions in the Hamas-affiliated European Palestinians Conference (EPC), organizing anti-Israel protests, flotillas, and campaigns.
Birawi drew international attention in 2025 as a key organizer of the Gaza-bound aid flotilla.
Israel, which designated Birawi as a key Hamas operative in Europe in 2013, uncovered documents last year in Gaza revealing the terrorist group’s direct role in organizing and funding the flotilla.
Among those documents was a detailed list of PCPA activists involved in the flotilla, identifying Birawi as the head of the PCPA’s Hamas sector in Britain.
According to a 2024 report on Hamas civilian fronts in the UK and Europe, Birawi was identified as “one of the most prominent Hamas- and Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated operatives in the UK.”
The OFAC also sanctioned six Gaza-based charitable organizations — Waed Society, Al-Nur, Qawafil, Al-Falah, Merciful Hands, and Al-Salameh — for supporting Hamas’s military wing.
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Iran’s Rising Death Toll Ramps Up Pressure on Trump to Respond
Protesters gathered on Jan. 24, 2026, at Joachimsthaler Platz in western Berlin, Germany, to rally in support of anti-regime demonstrations in Iran, calling for US military intervention. Photo: Michael Kuenne/PRESSCOV via ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect
More than 30,000 people may have been killed by Iranian security forces during a brutal crackdown on widespread anti-government protests earlier this month, according to new estimates that far exceed earlier death tolls.
The new figures have intensified pressure on the international community to respond to the Iranian regime’s shocking scale of violence, especially amid a US military buildup in the region following President Donald Trump’s repeated warnings to Iran and calls to help the protesters.
Two senior Iranian Ministry of Health officials told TIME that the scale of the killings and executions has overwhelmed the state’s capacity to dispose of the dead, as anti-regime protests erupted across more than 400 cities and towns, with over 4,000 clashes reported nationwide. According to the officials, as many as 30,000 people could have been killed in the streets of Iran on Jan. 8 and 9 alone.
The Iranian regime has reported an official death toll of 3,117. But new evidence suggests the true number is far higher, raising fears among activists and world leaders of crimes against humanity.
The US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), which tracks deaths by name and location, has confirmed 5,937 deaths, including 214 security personnel. Nearly 20,000 potential deaths are still under investigation, and tens of thousands of additional Iranians have been arrested amid the crackdown.
According to Dr. Amir Parasta, a German-Iranian physician, the latest figures do not include protest-related deaths recorded at military hospitals or in regions the investigation never reached, suggesting the toll is likely to keep rising.
More than 30,000 fatalities have been registered so far. With the support of my dedicated colleagues in Iran, we have been able to submit verified figures on deaths, injuries, and executions to the United Nations and to governments, and we will continue to update these data.
— Prof. Dr. Amir-Mobarez Parasta (@ProfParasta) January 25, 2026
Aligned with the Ministry of Health’s new figures, Iran International reported that security forces killed over 36,500 Iranians during the Jan. 8–9 nationwide crackdown, marking the deadliest two-day protest massacre in modern history. Thew news outlet cited newly obtained classified documents, field reports, and accounts from medical staff, witnesses, and victims’ families.
Iran International also noted the prevalence of extrajudicial execution of a number of detainees.
“Images released from morgues leave little doubt that some wounded citizens were shot in the head while hospitalized and undergoing medical treatment. It is evident that, had these individuals sustained fatal head wounds on the streets, there would have been no reason to admit them to hospital or begin treatment in the first place,” the outlet reported. “The images also show that in some cases, medical tubes and patient-monitoring equipment remained attached to the bodies. In other cases, cardiac monitoring electrodes are visible on the chest, suggesting these individuals were under medical care before being shot in the head. A number of doctors and nurses have also told Iran International that so-called ‘finishing shots’ were fired at wounded patients.”
Some families of protesters who were killed have reportedly been told they must pay up to $20,000 to bury their loved ones, while others were forced to sign papers falsely claiming their relatives had served in the security forces instead of participating in the protests.
According to Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, director of Norway-based Iran Human Rights, the Islamist regime is using this technique to conflate the number of security forces killed and downplay the death toll among protesters.
“One reason for this practice is that the regime seeks to avoid international pressure for killing protesters,” Amiry-Moghaddam said. “Another motive is to prepare the ground for future executions of protesters.”
Iranian judicial officials have previously dismissed US President Donald Trump’s claims about halting execution sentences for protesters as “useless and baseless nonsense,” warning that the government’s response to the unrest will be “decisive, deterrent, and swift.”
With Iranian authorities now maintaining an internet blackout for nearly three weeks, the actual number of casualties remains difficult to verify. Activists fear the internet shutdown is being used to conceal the full extent of the crackdown on anti-regime protests.
Iranian officials told The New York Times that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ordered security forces to suppress protesters “by any means necessary,” with explicit instructions to “shoot to kill and show no mercy.”
The latest figures, double previous estimates, come as the United States and the broader international community face growing pressure to act against the regime’s ongoing violence. For its part, the Iranian government has warned that any attack will be treated “as an all-out war.”
As regional tensions mount over the regime’s brutal crackdown on anti-government protests, Washington has increased its military presence in the region, moving a range of assets into the area — including the USS Abraham Lincoln and its strike group.
On Sunday, the US Air Force said it was set to begin a multi-day readiness exercise across the Middle East “to demonstrate the ability to deploy, disperse, and sustain combat airpower” in the region.
The UK Ministry of Defense announced last week it had also deployed Typhoon fighter jets to Qatar “in a defensive capacity.”
In the last few weeks, Trump has repeatedly warned that he may take “decisive” military action against Iran if the regime continues killing protesters.
“We’re watching Iran,” Trump said on his way back from the World Economic Forum in Davos. “I’d rather not see anything happen but we’re watching them very closely.”
With pressure mounting for Iran at home and abroad, experts say it remains unclear how Tehran will respond — whether by escalating militarily beyond its borders or by offering limited concessions to ease sanctions and mend ties with the West.
The nationwide protests, which began with a shopkeepers’ strike in Tehran on Dec. 28, initially reflected public anger over the soaring cost of living, a deepening economic crisis, and the rial — Iran’s currency — plummeting to record lows amid renewed economic sanctions, with annual inflation near 40 percent.
However, the demonstrations quickly swelled into a broader anti-government movement calling for the fall of Khamenei and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and even a broader collapse of the country’s Islamist, authoritarian system.
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Jewish Cemetery Desecrated in Barcelona, More Than 20 Graves Vandalized
Photo of vandalized tombstones in Barcelona via Federation of Jewish Community of Barcelona (CJB).
Vandals on Sunday targeted the Jewish cemetery in Barcelona, desecrating more than 20 graves and smashing tombstones.
The crime comes amid a sharp rise in antisemitic incidents and anti-Israel sentiment across Spain, whose Jewish community has expressed alarm over the increasingly hostile environment.
“We have seen how, at demonstrations, online and on the street, hate speech against Jews became routine. Then signs appeared across the city. Later, posters were hung on public buildings with slogans,” the Jewish Community of Barcelona said in a statement. “After that, a map was published marking Jewish targets, including a school. And now, the desecration of graves. This is not random. This is an escalation. From slogans to marking. From marking to threats. And from threats to action.”
The statement referred to an online platform mapping Jewish-owned businesses, schools, and Israeli-linked companies in Catalonia, a region in northeastern Spain.
A spokesperson for the Catalan police told Agence France Presse that “we are aware of the [cemetery] incident and have opened an investigation,”
The European Jewish Congress (EJC) condemned the vandalism on X.
“What we are seeing is not isolated. It is part of a wider escalation that begins with words, continues with targeting and intimidation and ends in acts like this,” the EJC said. “When hate is normalized in public discourse, the step to physical action becomes smaller.”
Israel’s Foreign Ministry also released a statement with photos of the crime, saying, “We condemn the vandalism of the Jewish cemetery in Barcelona. This despicable act is a result of the anti-Israel campaign by the Sánchez government. We stand with Spain’s Jewish community. Antisemitism must never be normalized and must be firmly rejected in all societies.”
In September, Lorenzo Rodríguez, mayor of Castrillo Mota de Judíos in northern Spain, warned that Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez had fueled antisemitic sentiment.
“The government is fostering antisemitism that will prove deeply damaging for Spain,” Rodríguez said. “Sánchez’s moves are less about serious foreign policy and more about deflecting attention from his trials and failures in governance.”
Rodríguez described his view that Spain “isn’t leading anything — it’s merely whitewashing Hamas and other terrorist groups.”
Sánchez had told members of his Socialist Workers’ Party that month that Israel should not be allowed to participate in international sports and that the Jewish state “cannot continue to use any international platform to whitewash its image.”
Spain’s Culture Minister Ernest Urtasun has expressed similar calls for boycotting Israel, saying, “We have to make sure that Israel does not take part in the next Eurovision,” referring to the international song contest.
Madrid has been one of the West’s fiercest critics of Israel’s defensive military campaign in Gaza following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel.
“What [Israeli] Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu presented in October 2023 as a military operation in response to the horrific terrorist attacks has ended up becoming a new wave of illegal occupations and an unjustifiable attack against the Palestinian civilian population – an attack that the UN special rapporteur and the majority of experts already describe as a genocide,” Sánchez said in a televised speech last year.
The diplomatic tension between the two nations reached a boiling point in September, when Madrid recalled its ambassador.
The American Jewish Committee (AJC) describes Barcelona as notable for its anti-Israel sentiment, characterizing its position as an “outlier status.”
The AJC wrote in May 2023 that in February of that year, “Barcelona Mayor Ada Colau announced that Spain’s second-largest city would sever ties with its twin city Tel Aviv. The move answered the demands of anti-Israel activists who in January had petitioned the city council to condemn Israel.”
The Anti-Defamation League’s Global 100 report names Spain as one of the most antisemitic countries in Europe (ranked 15 out of 18 in the region), with 26 percent of adults — 10.4 million people — expressing belief in six or more bigoted tropes against Jews.
The Spanish Jewish community recently filed complaints over an online platform that targeted Jewish establishments.
First reported by the local Jewish outlet Enfoque Judío, the interactive map — known as Barcelonaz — was launched by an unidentified group claiming to be “journalists, professors, and students” on the French-hosted mapping platform GoGoCarto.
As a publicly accessible and collaboratively created online platform, the map marked over 150 schools, Jewish-owned businesses — including kosher food shops — and Israeli-linked as well as Spanish and international companies operating in Israel, labeling them as “Zionist.”
Jewish leaders in Spain strongly denounced the BarcelonaZ initiative, warning that it fostered further discrimination and hatred against the community amid an increasingly hostile environment in which Jews and Israelis continue to be targeted.
Amid the backlash, GoGoCarto announced it had removed the BarcelonaZ project from its website after local groups denounced the initiative as blatantly antisemitic and dangerous.