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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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Israeli Judoka and Olympic Medalist Peter Paltchik Announces Retirement
Paris 2024 Olympics – Judo – Men -100 kg Victory Ceremony – Champ-de-Mars Arena, Paris, France – August 01, 2024. Bronze medallist Peter Paltchik of Israel celebrates on the podium. Photo: REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon
Ukrainian-born Israeli judoka and Olympic medalist Peter Paltchik announced his retirement in an online video and emotional press conference on Monday.
Paltchik, 33, shared a video on social media of him sitting across from his head coach, Oren Smadga, as he announced the shocking news. The former athlete said he has no regrets about his career, reflected on his journey as an athlete, and teared up while thanking Smadga for his support over the years and talking about their close connection.
Paltchik is Israel’s most decorated judoka, winning bronze medals at the Olympics in Tokyo in 2020 and Paris in 2024. He also took home a bronze medal in the International Judo Federation’s 2021 World Judo Masters and won gold in the European Judo Championships’ under-100 kg division in Prague in November 2020. He additionally has gold medals from the 2020 Paris Grand Slam, 2018 Abu Dhabi Grand Slam, 2020 European Judo Championships, and four Grand Prix tournaments.
After Monday’s announcement, the Olympic Committee of Israel praised Paltchik and wished him good luck in all his future endeavors. “Peter proved that a long path of work, discipline, faith, and personal depth can turn a dream into reality,” the committee said in a released statement. “He set an example for an entire generation of athletes and athletes and provided moments that will not be forgotten. Peter, thank you for the way, for the heart, for the values, and for the energy you brought to every scene.”
In September 2024, Paltchik launched the Paltchik Foundation to support talented young athletes. He committed to allocating 3 percent of his business revenues to the foundation, which has all volunteer staff members to ensure that every donation goes directly to helping athletes in need. Paltchik is currently pursing a bachelor’s degree in advertising and marketing communications.
In May, Smadga resigned as the head coach of Israel’s national judo team. A former judoka himself, Smadga was the first Israeli man to win an Olympic medal when he won bronze at the Barcelona Olympics in 1992, and he has served as the coach of the men’s team since 2010. Smadga’s 25-year-old son was killed in combat in June 2024 while fighting with the Israeli military in the Gaza Strip during the Israel-Hamas war.
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‘Eid,’ the first Israeli feature directed by a Bedouin, is a heartfelt portrait of an artist
By day, Eid works on a kibbutz, laying bricks and waiting for cement to set. At home, he escapes on Skype, making calls to his beloved in Paris, a married writer and actress, and dreams of one day joining her and producing a play he’s writing. But when his sister gets engaged, he is compelled to marry her fiancé’s sister in a Badal, or exchange, marriage.
Eid, by Yousef Abo Madegem, believed to be the first Israeli Bedouin to direct a feature film, tracks its title character — marvelously played by Shadi Mar’i — as he suffers the whips and scorns of tradition in the face of his own ambition.
Hamlet, indeed, seems like a spiritual basis. Eid is trapped in the expectations of his little life, escaping by rehearsing lyrical monologues responding to sexual abuse he suffered as a child. When he takes a tentative step toward freedom, the irresolution of his lover, waiting at a literal threshold, stops his momentum. (It’s very “now I might do it pat.”)
At its core, the story, written by Yuval Aharoni, director of 2017’s Heritage, is a study of a community rarely seen in Israeli film, that of Bedouin citizens of Israel who rely on Jewish employers, often suffering exploitation at their hands.
What is refreshing about the film, which takes place in the majority Bedouin city of Rahat, is its intimacy and scale. It is not a definitive picture of how the approximately 200,000 Bedouins live, but one man’s story, in which discrimination is largely incidental. (Madegem based Eid’s story on a friend of his.)
Eid is a character of pure potential, fluent in Hebrew, determined to make a life in the theater, but stifled by his demanding father and his duty to a wife he didn’t choose. His bride, played by Angham Khalil, has her own moment to consider her fate, as her mother and mother-in-law slowly unwrap her wedding hijab.
In an interview with The Jerusalem Post, Madegem said he made the film in part to discuss sexual violence against boys and begin a conversation within his community. But the film has universal appeal, and its light touch is impressive for a debut tackling heavy subject matter.
As Eid works through his play, sometimes shouting its lines at his tormenters in the kibbutz, he pokes fun at a suggestion: that it must conclude in a confrontation.
“We’re Bedouins,” he quips “all our stories end in a confrontation.”
They don’t all have to. And, as Eid itself is proof, sometimes the best stories don’t.
The film Eid is having its New York debut at the Other Israel Film Festival at the Marlene Meyerson JCC in New York City on Thursday, Nov. 11, followed by a Q&A with director Yousef Abo Madegem.
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Cornell inks $60M deal with Trump administration to resolve antisemitism claims
Cornell University will pay $60 million to the Trump administration to resolve ongoing antisemitism investigations and unfreeze $250 million in federal funds, becoming the fourth Ivy League school and fifth overall to strike such a deal.
The deal came weeks after another agreement signed by the University of Virginia, and also followed the resolution of an ongoing controversy at Cornell involving a Jewish professor’s course on Gaza.
“With this resolution, Cornell looks forward to resuming the long and fruitful partnership with the federal government that has yielded, for so many years, so much progress and well-being for our nation and our world,” Michael Kotlikoff, the school’s Jewish president, said in a statement Friday announcing the deal.
In a virtual campus town hall after the deal was announced, Kotlikoff linked the university’s negotiation of the settlement to the broader campus climate in the two-plus years since the Hamas attack on Israel and war in Gaza.
“Universities across the country have made significant progress since disruptions on campus on October 7 in articulating our rules, appropriately enforcing our rules and making sure that everybody’s rights are protected,” he said, as reported by the Cornell student newspaper.
As part of the deal, Cornell will pay the federal government $20 million per year for the next three years in exchange for the unfreezing of several grants to the university, many of which are connected to the Department of Defense. Half of the money will be directed to investments in agriculture programs.
The school also promises to “conduct annual campus climate surveys to ensure that Jewish students are safe and that anti-Semitism is being addressed,” according to a White House release about the deal. In the aftermath of Oct. 7, Cornell’s campus dealt with violent threats against Jewish students as well as a faculty member who had praised the Hamas attacks.
The government, in turn, promises to drop its ongoing Title VI investigations into allegations of discrimination based on shared Jewish ancestry or national origin at the school. Kotlikoff further insisted that Cornell would preserve its academic freedom, and would not be forced to abide by White House guidelines on other campus concerns such as diversity-based hiring and transgender athletes.
Cornell’s agreement follows earlier ones struck by Columbia, the University of Pennsylvania, Brown and UVA. UVA, the first public university to strike an antisemitism-related deal with Trump, was not required to make any payments to the federal government, according to the deal it announced last month.
Instead, UVA agreed to end certain diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, known as DEI, and eliminate language referring to transgender people, among other provisions. None of the public terms of its settlement involved addressing antisemitism.
Momodou Taal addresses fellow students at a Cornell University pro-Palestinian demonstration in April 2024. (Screenshot from Cornell Daily Sun video)
One prominent on-campus critic of Cornell’s handling of antisemitism issues praised the school’s settlement as “pragmatic” in an interview with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
“I think the fact that all Title VI investigations have been closed is a tremendously important reassurance to students and parents that the university, in fact, is doing all it can to protect Jewish students from any kind of antisemitic discrimination or incident,” said Menachem Rosensaft, an adjunct law professor at Cornell.
Rosensaft added that the agreement “also sends a very clear signal to anyone who is inclined to engage in antisemitic discrimination or violence that they will suffer the consequences.”
Rosensaft had been at the middle of a more recent Israel-related controversy at Cornell after he complained to Kotlikoff about a pro-Palestinian Jewish professor’s plan to teach a class on Gaza. Kotlikoff’s criticisms of the class, in emails published by JTA, prompted campus advocacy groups to admonish what they said were his threats to academic freedom.
That professor, Eric Cheyfitz, prompted an internal investigation after he tried to remove an Israeli graduate student from his Gaza class. Last month, Cheyfitz opted to retire from teaching in order to end the investigation.
The university pressure on Cheyfitz, Rosensaft said, was further evidence — along with the settlement — that Cornell has started to take threats of antisemitism seriously.
“He will no longer be able to propagate his extreme anti-Zionism in the classroom,” Rosensaft said.
Further Trump negotiations with universities remain ongoing, even as more and more Jews say they think such deals are only using antisemitism as an excuse to attack higher education.
The terms of a proposed $1 billion payout from the University of California system, recently made public by a court order, include specific reference to antisemitic incidents that took place on UCLA’s campus. In addition, a closely watched negotiation with Harvard remains ongoing.
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