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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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Cornell University Clears President of Wrongdoing After Incident With Anti-Israel Protesters
Cornell University students walk on campus, November 2023. Photo: USA TODAY NETWORK via Reuters Connect
Cornell University absolved its president, Michael Kotlikoff, of wrongdoing following an incident in which anti-Israel protesters accused him of lightly impacting a student and an alumnus with his car as they participated in a mob which had surrounded the vehicle to prevent his leaving a parking space.
As seen in viral footage shared on social media and reported in local outlets, Kotlikoff was walking to his car on April 30 when an anti-Zionist group converged on him, demanding a chance to interrogate him about free speech and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Kotlikoff resolved to go home, however, telling the group that he would not answer any more questions and asked them to stop recording.
After the protesters refused to comply, Kotlikoff denied the protesters their move to form a blockade around his parking spot, reversing out of it even as the student and alumnus held their positions to hold him still.
All the while, the mob banged on the vehicle, creating what the school described as a sense of imminent danger.
“The actions taken by these individuals on April 30th, which included following President Kotlikoff from an evening event into a parking lot and impeding his ability to leave, are inconsistent with university policies governing expressive activity and our standards for respectful conduct, safety, and the prohibition of intimidation,” the university’s Ad Hoc Special Committee of the Board of Trustees said in a statement on Friday announcing its decision after reviewing the incident. “President Kotlikoff has declined to pursue a complaint against the students involved.”
Noting it considered evidence gathered by the Cornell University Police Department (CUPD), including video footage and a sworn statement from Kotlikoff, the committee said the person at the scene who reported that Kotlikoff’s vehicle had made contact refused treatment from the EMS team and would not provide a sworn statement to CUPD. None of the individuals at the scene gave sworn statements about the incident.
The committee added that “appropriate action” was taken against at least one of Kotlikoff’s “non-student” harassers and called on students to appreciate the importance of “robust debate” and “peaceful protest,” values it extolled Kotlikoff for upholding “over the course of his decades long tenure at Cornell.”
Cornell University is no stranger to radical anti-Zionist activity. In 2023, a history professor there cheered Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel — a cornucopia of evils which included torture and gang rape. That same semester, an ex-student, Patrick Dai, threatened to perpetrate mass murder and sex crimes against Jewish students.
Anti-Zionists activists at Cornell have also heavily featured blood in their political messaging. Last year, they doused a statue in red paint and left behind a graffitied message which said “occupation=death.”
Kotlikoff, whom trustees appointed to the university’s top position in 2024 at the peak of student protests over the Israel-Hamas war, is a veteran of several clashes with the school’s anti-Israel faction.
Having enacted a zero-tolerance disciplinary policy, Kotlikoff has pursued criminal investigations against protesters who break the law, as happened in September 2024 when a mass of them disrupted a career fair because it was attended by defense contractors Boeing and L3Harris. The incident resulted in at least three arrests, and, later, severe sanctions, including classifying five students as “persona non grata,” which, Cornell says, bans from campus “a person who has exhibited behavior which has been deemed detrimental to the university community.”
Anti-Zionist student groups have tried and failed several times to initiate mass demonstrations or make other big moves during these final weeks of the academic year.
At Occidental College in Los Angeles, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) “peacefully” took down an encampment it established in April to protest the institution’s financial ties to Israel after school officials rushed to the scene to take names and issue disciplinary referrals, deterring others joining in.
At Smith College in Massachusetts, SJP activists last month were granted a meeting with high-level officials at a later date in exchange for the group’s ending an unauthorized encampment established on campus to protest the board of trustees’ decision to reject a proposal inspired by the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Jewish Man Brutally Attacked in London After Speaking Hebrew
Jewish man beaten in London on May 17, 2026, after speaking Hebrew. Images circulating on social media show the victim’s face heavily bloodied and bruised, with multiple visible cuts and swelling in the aftermath of the assault. Photo: Screenshot
British police are searching for a group of attackers after a young Jewish man was brutally assaulted in the north London area of Golders Green following an incident in which he was overheard speaking Hebrew, the latest outrage in a surge of antisemitic violence and harassment shaking the city’s Jewish community.
On Sunday night, a 22-year-old Jewish man was violently attacked by a group of four to five unidentified individuals outside his home in Golders Green, one of the most visible centers of Jewish life in London, around 2 am, after they allegedly overheard him speaking Hebrew during a phone call.
According to multiple media reports, masked men walking nearby heard the man speaking Hebrew on his phone and began chasing him while shouting antisemitic insults.
Once they caught up with him, the group allegedly demanded to know if he was Jewish, before dragging him across the road, ripping his clothes, and stealing one of his shoes.
The attackers brutally beat him, according to reports, repeatedly kicking him until he was left close to losing consciousness, with images later circulating on social media showing his face covered in cuts and bruises.
Local law enforcement arrived at the scene shortly afterward, but the suspects had already fled. The victim was later taken to hospital for treatment of his injuries and has since been receiving medical care.
As authorities continue their investigation, the assault is being treated as an antisemitic hate crime, with no arrests made so far.
The Campaign Against Antisemitism, a British charity, strongly condemned the incident, warning of a sharp escalation in threats facing Jewish communities and calling for urgent action to confront the rising tide of violence.
“It is plain for all to see that Jewish lives are under threat in their own communities. We cannot wait any longer for real intervention against this horrific wave of violence against Britain’s Jews,” the statement read. “We are in dire need of urgent action.”
In the United Kingdom, the Jewish community has faced a mounting wave of antisemitic violence, intimidation, and street-level harassment over the past two years following the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, with the escalation deepening concerns over public safety.
Over the past couple months, however, the rate and intensity of incidents have spiked, with arson attacks, stabbings, and other forms of violence.
Recently, an increasingly popular antisemitic TikTok trend in London has led to arrests and convictions after young men filmed themselves using cash to mock and harass members of Orthodox Jewish communities.
Videos circulating on social media show young men walking through heavily Jewish areas of London carrying fishing rods with money attached to the line in an apparent attempt to “fish for Jews.”
In a separate incident last weekend in Stamford Hill, a man allegedly whipped several Haredi Jewish women with a belt before spitting at volunteer responders who arrived at the scene. Witnesses said he also shouted racist insults, antisemitic slurs, and threats at both the victims and the volunteers.
Hours later, in nearby Amhurst Park in north London, a Jewish child was allegedly assaulted outside a school after a woman screamed antisemitic insults and punched the minor.
Three weeks ago, an assailant stabbed two Jewish men in Golders Green — an attack that prompted the British government to raise the national terrorism threat level from “substantial” to “severe” for the first time in over four years.
In March, arsonists set fire to four ambulances belonging to the Jewish Hatzola organization in the area. Weeks later, a synagogue and the former premises of a Jewish charity in north London were also targeted.
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Iran’s Executions More Than Double in 2025, Making Up 80% of Global Total, New Data Shows
A February 2023 protest in Washington, DC calling for an end to executions and human rights violations in Iran. Photo: Reuters/ Bryan Olin Dozier.
The Islamic regime in Iran led the world in documented executions last year, with 2,159 people killed out of a total of 2,707 across 17 nations, according to a report released on Monday by Amnesty International.
Iran’s executions surged since 2024, when the regime carried out at least 972. All executions were conducted through hanging.
Following Iran, the next countries with the highest totals included Saudi Arabia, 356 or more; Yemen, 51; the United States, 47; Egypt, 23; Somalia, 17; Kuwait, 17; Singapore, 17; Afghanistan, six; and the United Arab Emirates, three.
Three countries executed one person: Japan, South Sudan, and Taiwan. In the US, nearly half of all executions took place in Florida. In total, Iran and Saudi Arabia accounted for 93 percent of documented global executions.
Notably, the 2025 total did not include “the thousands of executions that Amnesty International believes continued to be carried out in China, which remained the world’s lead executioner.”
China “continued to execute and sentence to death thousands of people but kept figures secret,” stated the report, which explained other countries did not disclose their death penalty numbers including North Korea, Vietnam, Laos, and Belarus.
“In the face of the state secrecy that continued to surround data on the death penalty, disclosures and commentary by the Chinese authorities once again pointed to an intentional use of the death penalty to send a message that the state would not tolerate threats to public security or stability; and would impose severe punishment to maintain order,” the report said.
According to Amnesty International, 2025 saw the highest number of executions globally since 1981, with Iran leading the surge.
“This alarming spike in the use of the death penalty is due to a small, isolated group of states willing to carry out executions at all costs, despite the continued global trend towards abolition,” said Agnès Callamard, secretary general of Amnesty International. “From China, Iran, North Korea, and Saudi Arabia to Yemen, Kuwait, Singapore, and the USA, this shameless minority are weaponizing the death penalty.”
Callamard warned that the use of the death penalty sought to “instill fear, crush dissent, and show the strength state institutions have over disadvantaged people and marginalized communities”
The report showed a disturbing trend among the executions: that 46 percent of offenders (1,257) received the sentence for drug convictions, with 998 in Iran, 250 in Saudi Arabia, 15 in Singapore, and two in Kuwait. Amnesty documented 11 public hangings in Iran and six in Afghanistan — spectacles meant to terrorize communities as much as punish individuals.
Amnesty published its findings weeks after a joint-annual report released by the European groups Iran Human Rights (IHR) in Norway and Together Against the Death Penalty (ECPM) in France found Iran executed at least 1,639 people in 2025, a 68 percent leap from the 975 killed in 2024 and the highest seen since tracking began in 2008.
In March, the Human Rights Activists News Agency released a report on broader crackdowns in Iran last year, identifying that 78,907 people were arrested on ideological or political grounds from March 2025 to March 2026. In addition, the group found at least 6,724 protesters, including 236 children, were killed, with an additional 11,744 cases still under verification. Researchers also discovered 105 women were murdered with seven classified as “honor killings,” and that 68 were victims of sexual violence.
While men dominated the list of executions in the annual report, Iran executed 61 women and Saudi Arabia executed five.
Regarding methods of execution deployed, hanging was the preference of Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Japan, Kuwait, Singapore, and South Sudan. Countries using firing squads included Afghanistan, China, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Taiwan, the UAE, and Yemen. China, the US, and Vietnam rely on lethal injections while some US states use nitrogen gas asphyxiation.
Saudi Arabia is the world’s only state to continue beheading as a method of execution. The kingdom maintains the practice in accordance with Islamic law which mandates death for a wide range of offenses including adultery, sorcery, and apostasy.
The report noted that last year in Yemen, 18 people were convicted and sentenced to death “for sexual acts that do not constitute internationally recognized offenses – including sexual relations among consenting adults of the same-sex, and drug-related offenses.”
Saudi Arabia has also executed people convicted of offenses as children. Researchers described how on Aug. 21, 2025, the government executed Jalal Labbad (who was born on April 3, 1995) for his alleged “participation in protests in 2011 and 2012 against the treatment of Saudi Arabia’s Shia minority in Al-Qatif, as well as his attendance at funerals of individuals killed by security forces. On Aug. 1, 2022, the Specialized Criminal Court (SCC) convicted and sentenced him to death for alleged offences committed when he was 16 and 17 years old.”
Amnesty claimed success in its campaign to end capital punishment which started in 1977, noting that at the time 16 countries had banned the practice and today the number has reached 113.