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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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Putin and Trump Do Not Support European-Ukrainian Temporary Ceasefire Idea, the Kremlin Says
Russian President Vladimir Putin delivers a speech during a session of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. Photo: Reuters/Maxim Shemetov
The Kremlin said on Sunday that Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump do not support a European-Ukrainian push for a temporary ceasefire ahead of a settlement, and that Moscow thinks Kyiv needs to make a decision on Donbas.
Kremlin foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov said that a call between Putin and Trump lasted 1 hour and 15 minutes and took place at the request of Trump ahead of Trump’s meeting in Miami with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
“The main thing is that the presidents of Russia and the United States hold similar views that the option of a temporary ceasefire proposed by the Ukrainians and the Europeans under the pretext of preparing for a referendum or under other pretexts only leads to a prolongation of the conflict and is fraught with renewed hostilities,” Ushakov said.
Ushakov said that for hostilities to end, Kyiv needed to make a “bold decision” in line with Russian-US discussions on Donbas.
“Given the current situation on the fronts, it would make sense for the Ukrainian regime to make this decision regarding Donbas.”
Russia, which controls 90 percent of Donbas, wants Ukraine to withdraw its forces from the 10 percent of the area that Kyiv’s forces still control. Overall, Russia controls about a fifth of Ukraine.
Trump has repeatedly promised to end the deadliest conflict in Europe since World War Two and his envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner have been negotiating with Russia, Ukraine and European powers.
Ukraine and its European allies are worried that Trump could sell out Ukraine and leave European powers to foot the bill for supporting a devastated Ukraine after Russian forces took 12-17 square km (4.6-6.6 square miles) of Ukraine per day in 2025.
“Donald Trump listened attentively to Russian assessments of the real prospects for reaching an agreement,” Ushakov said.
“Trump persistently pursued the idea that it was really necessary to end the war as soon as possible, and spoke about the impressive prospects for economic cooperation between the United States and Russia and Ukraine that were opening up,” Ushakov said.
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Zelensky to Meet Trump in Florida for Talks on Ukraine Peace Plan
FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump welcomes Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., October 17, 2025. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst/File Photo
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and US President Donald Trump will meet in Florida on Sunday to forge a plan to end the war in Ukraine, but face differences over major issues, including territory, as Russian air raids pile pressure on Kyiv.
Russia hit the capital and other parts of Ukraine with hundreds of missiles and drones on Saturday, knocking out power and heat in parts of the capital. On Saturday, during a meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney in Nova Scotia, Zelensky called it Russia’s response to the US-brokered peace efforts.
Zelensky has told journalists that he plans to discuss the fate of eastern Ukraine’s contested Donbas region during the meeting at Trump’s Florida residence, as well as the future of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant and other topics.
The Ukrainian president and his delegation arrived in Florida late on Saturday, Ukraine’s Deputy Foreign Minister Serhiy Kyslytsya said on X.
RUSSIA CLAIMS MORE BATTLEFIELD ADVANCES
Moscow has repeatedly insisted that Ukraine yield all of the Donbas, even areas still under Kyiv’s control, and Russian officials have objected to other parts of the latest proposal, sparking doubts about whether Russian President Vladimir Putin would accept whatever Sunday’s talks might produce.
Putin said on Saturday Moscow would continue waging its war if Kyiv did not seek a quick peace. Russia has steadily advanced on the battlefield in recent months, claiming control over several more settlements on Sunday.
The Ukrainian president told Axios on Friday he hopes to soften a US proposal for Ukrainian forces to withdraw completely from the Donbas. Failing that, Zelensky said the entire 20-point plan, the result of weeks of negotiations, should be put to a referendum.
A recent poll suggests that Ukrainian voters may reject the plan.
Zelensky’s in-person meeting with Trump, scheduled for 1 p.m. (1800 GMT), follows weeks of diplomatic efforts. European allies, while at times cut out of the loop, have stepped up efforts to sketch out the contours of a post-war security guarantee for Kyiv that the United States would support.
On Sunday, ahead of his meeting with Trump, Zelensky said he held a detailed phone call with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
Trump and Zelensky were also expected to hold a phone call with European leaders during their Florida meeting, a spokesperson for the Ukrainian president said on Sunday.
STICKING POINTS OVER TERRITORY
Kyiv and Washington have agreed on many issues, and Zelensky said on Friday that the 20-point plan was 90% finished. But the issue of what territory, if any, will be ceded to Russia remains unresolved.
While Moscow insists on getting all of the Donbas, Kyiv wants the map frozen at current battle lines.
The United States, seeking a compromise, has proposed a free economic zone if Ukraine leaves the area, although it remains unclear how that zone would function in practical terms.
It has also proposed shared control over the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, where power line repairs have begun after another local ceasefire brokered by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the agency said on Sunday.
Zelensky, whose past meetings with Trump have not always gone smoothly, worries along with his European allies that Trump could sell out Ukraine and leave European powers to foot the bill for supporting a devastated nation, after Russian forces took 12 to 17 square km (4.6-6.6 square miles) of its territory per day in 2025.
Russia controls all of Crimea, which it annexed in 2014, and since its invasion of Ukraine nearly four years ago has taken control of about 12 percent of its territory, including about 90 percent of Donbas, 75 percent of the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, and slivers of the Kharkiv, Sumy, Mykolaiv and Dnipropetrovsk regions, according to Russian estimates.
Putin said on December 19 that a peace deal should be based on conditions he set out in 2024: Ukraine withdrawing from all of the Donbas, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, and Kyiv officially renouncing its aim to join NATO.
Ukrainian officials and European leaders view the war as an imperial-style land grab by Moscow and have warned that if Russia gets its way with Ukraine, it will one day attack NATO members.
The 20-point plan was spun off from a Russian-led 28-point plan, which emerged from talks between U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and Russian special envoy Kirill Dmitriev, and which became public in November.
Subsequent talks between Ukrainian officials and U.S. negotiators have produced the more Kyiv-friendly 20-point plan.
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Central African Republic Votes, Russia Ally Touadera Seeks Third Term
People wait to cast their vote at a polling station during the presidential election in Bangui, Central African Republic, December 28, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/ Leger Serge Kokpakpa
Central African Republic President Faustin-Archange Touadera is seeking a third term on Sunday as the chronically unstable country holds national elections, touting security gains made with the help of Russian mercenaries and Rwandan soldiers.
The 68-year-old mathematician oversaw a constitutional referendum in 2023 that scrapped the presidential term limit, drawing an outcry from his critics who accused him of seeking to rule for life.
A Touadera victory – the expected outcome – would likely further the interests of Russia, which has traded security assistance for access to resources including gold and diamonds. Touadera is also offering access to the country’s lithium and uranium reserves to anyone interested.
Polling stations opened on time at 6 a.m. (0500 GMT) in the capital, Bangui, a Reuters witness said. They were due to close at 6 p.m. (1700 GMT), with provisional results expected by January 5. Nearly 2.4 million people were registered to vote.
Casting her ballot in Bangui, shopkeeper Beatrice Mokonzapa said women had “suffered greatly” during Central African Republic’s years of conflict but that the situation had improved.
“We have security today. I hope it continues. And for that, President Touadera is best placed to guarantee our security,” she said.
SIX OPPONENTS CHALLENGE TOUADERA
The opposition field of six candidates is led by two former prime ministers, Anicet-Georges Dologuele and Henri-Marie Dondra, both of whom survived attempts by Touadera’s supporters to have them disqualified for allegedly holding foreign citizenship.
Though both men remain on the ballot, Touadera is still seen as the favorite given his control over state institutions and superior financial resources, analysts say.
In an interview with Reuters on Wednesday, Dondra said the playing field was “unbalanced” and that he had been unable to travel as widely as Touadera to campaign. He nevertheless predicted he would have a strong showing.
The challenges to the candidacies of Dologuele and Dondra “aligned with an apparent pattern of administrative manoeuvring that has disproportionately impeded opposition politicians while favouring the ruling United Hearts Party,” Human Rights Watch said last month.
Voting in the capital early on Sunday, teacher Albert Komifea said he wanted a change, without specifying who he had backed.
“They did everything they could to prevent the opposition from campaigning effectively, in order to reduce their chances,” he said. “But the ballot box will confirm that change is now.”
RUSSIA AND RWANDA REINFORCE TOUADERA
In 2018, CAR became the first country in West and Central Africa to bring in Russia’s Wagner mercenaries, a step since also taken by Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger.
Two years later, Rwanda deployed troops to shore up Touadera’s government as rebel groups threatened the capital and tried to disrupt the 2020 elections, ultimately preventing voting at 800 polling stations across the country, or 14% of the total.
The country is more secure now after Touadera signed several peace deals with rebel groups this year.
But those gains remain fragile: Rebels have not fully disarmed, reintegration is incomplete, and incursions by combatants from neighboring Sudan fuel insecurity in the east.
Beyond the presidential contest, the elections on Sunday cover legislative, regional and municipal positions.
If no candidate gets more than 50% of the vote, a presidential runoff will take place on February 15, while legislative runoffs will take place on April 5.
Pangea-Risk, a consultancy, wrote in a note to clients that the risk of unrest after the election was high as opponents were likely to challenge Touadera’s expected victory.
A smooth voting process could reinforce Touadera’s claim that stability is returning, which was buttressed last year with the U.N. Security Council’s lifting of an arms embargo and the lifting of a separate embargo on diamond exports.
In November, the U.N. Security Council extended the mandate of its peacekeeping mission. The US opposed the decision, calling for a shorter extension and a handover of security to Bangui.