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Brandeis U reeling after bus accident leaves 1 student dead, dozens injured; Jewish students hold vigils
WALTHAM, Massachusetts (JTA) — The days before Thanksgiving break were supposed to be packed at Brandeis University’s Hillel: There was a talk on Sunday about sexuality in Judaism, a ceremony for students who participated in a study program and a forum for candidates running to help lead the campus Jewish center.
Instead, Hillel canceled everything and instead threw open its doors for students and faculty in need of comfort and support after one of their classmates was killed and dozens more injured in an accident involving a shuttle bus many of them take regularly.
The crash occurred at 10:45 p.m. Saturday only a half mile from campus, sending shockwaves through the Brandeis community.
Rabbi Seth Winberg, the executive director of the school’s Hillel and the university’s senior chaplain, said scores of students have reached out to his organization since the deadly accident, unsettled after learning about it from communications from the college and in text messages from friends. He said he has also heard from parents and alumni, from as far away as Israel.
“We are trying to help students process and grieve,” Winberg told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
That was the theme on campus Sunday, as details emerged about the crash and its aftermath. The bus, operated by a contractor who provides transportation services to Brandeis, was returning students to campus from a hockey game at Northeastern University, according to the local district attorney’s office, which is investigating the accident.
BREAKING: Bus crash on South St in Waltham near Brandeis University. #wbz pic.twitter.com/A3DFnqwc6o
— AndreaWBZ (@AndreaWBZ) November 20, 2022
Images and video posted to social media showed that the bus was heavily damaged, its front end virtually disintegrated, its roof shredded after a rollover and all windows broken. Debris was still piled at the South Street crash site Sunday afternoon.
One student died at the scene. Vanessa Mark was “an active and cherished member of the Brandeis community” who was on leave but living in Waltham, according to an announcement by the school’s president, Ron Liebowitz, on Sunday.
By early Sunday afternoon, five of the 26 people who had been hospitalized immediately following the crash remained in the hospital, Julie Jette, Brandeis’s assistant vice president for communications wrote in an email. Jette cautioned that the information was fluid because of the severity of the crash and the complexity of the situation.
“Given the number of injured people and the different hospitals to which they were transported, it is taking time to determine the status of everyone involved,” she said.
Liebowitz announced in a message to the community Sunday that classes would be canceled on Monday and Tuesday and counseling services would be made widely available.
“This will enable some students to return to family and friends sooner than the normal holiday schedule would have allowed,” he wrote. “For students who will remain on campus, we will have additional opportunities to gather and receive support.”
Liebowitz outlined the resources available to students at a community meeting Sunday morning, where hundreds of students crowded into the campus center for a community-wide gathering about the accident, Winberg told JTA.
Students remained after the gathering for up to an hour, according to Samantha Brody, a junior from Deerfield, Illinois, who is the president of Hillel’s student board.
Students “want to reach out and see each other,” Brody said. “There were lots of hugs.”
She added that both conversation and quiet contemplation were called for: “Everyone needs something different.”
Brandeis, a nonsectarian college, has its roots in the American Jewish community, which founded the liberal arts institution in 1948 at a time when Jews were often restricted in student admissions and in faculty appointments to competitive colleges. Today, just over a third of undergraduates self-identify as Jewish, according to various published reports.
Students active in Hillel and its leaders quickly came together to organize gatherings to offer support. The Brandeis Orthodox student group scheduled an afternoon prayer service, while the Brandeis Reform Chavurah and Masorti (Conservative) student groups jointly organized a service of their own. On Sunday evening, the community planned to come together to sing niggunim, or wordless melodies, as a quiet way to offer comfort.
“These are examples that show how everyone wants to be together, in person,” Brody told JTA.
Brody said on Sunday afternoon that she did not know anyone who was on the bus but knows people whose friends were. She said she has taken the shuttle bus before.
“Most people on campus have. It’s the easiest way to get to Boston. Everyone is thinking, ‘it could have been me,’” she added.
That was true for Draken Garfinkel, a Jewish senior from the Washington, D.C., area who was not on the bus. “I use it every week to see my brother,” a student at another college in Boston, he said.
When he learned about the crash early Sunday morning, from the university’s communication and from text messages from friends, Garfinkel immediately wanted to do something to help others — especially those on the bus who were hospitalized, he told JTA in a phone conversation.
One of those students is a friend, a foreign exchange student, he said.
He and others who are part of an activist student group helped organize sending text messages to students they knew were in the hospital as a way to express concern for their well being.
It’s important for all students to be aware of counseling services that are available, he emphasized, adding, “One of the worst things is when people don’t know don’t how to deal with grief.”
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Federal Funding for Trump’s Ballroom in Jeopardy After Senate Ruling
Aerial view from the top of the Washington Monument shows construction crews as they continue site preparation for a planned White House ballroom in the area of the former East Wing in Washington, D.C., U.S., May 2, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Ken Cedeno
A US Senate official on Saturday removed security funding that could be used for President Donald Trump’s planned White House ballroom from a massive spending package, Democratic lawmakers said, imperiling Republican efforts to devote taxpayer money to the contentious project.
The decision by the Senate’s parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, deals a blow to Trump and his administration, which has sought the money for security purposes related to the ballroom.
Trump has said the construction of the ballroom would be funded by $400 million in private donations. But Senate Republicans are seeking $1 billion in taxpayer funding to the Secret Service for security upgrades to the ballroom and other structures being built beneath it.
FRIVOLOUS DIVERSION OR NECESSARY MODERNIZATION?
Democrats have criticized the ballroom as an expensive and frivolous diversion by Trump at a time when Americans face rising costs such as higher fuel prices. Trump, a real estate developer-turned-politician, has written on social media that it will be “the finest Building of its kind anywhere in the World.”
MacDonough ruled that the security funding provision falls under chamber rules that require 60 votes to pass most legislation, according to the office of Senator Jeff Merkley, the top Democrat on the Senate Budget Committee.
Republicans hold a 53-47 majority in the Senate.
The parliamentarian interprets Senate rules, including whether legislative provisions are permitted. Republican senators still could revise the legislation to try to gain the parliamentarian’s approval.
Ryan Wrasse, spokesman for Senate Majority Leader John Thune, said in a social media post that Republicans would keep trying. “Redraft. Refine. Resubmit,” Wrasse wrote on X.
If Republicans do not succeed, they may be unable to include the ballroom-related funding in a $72 billion spending package they plan to bring to a vote on the Senate floor, with passage expected on a party-line vote with Democrats opposed. The bulk of the legislation is devoted to immigration enforcement.
Republicans have been invoking complex budget rules to try to secure passage without any Democratic support.
“While we expect Republicans to change this bill to appease Trump, Democrats are prepared to challenge any change to this bill,” Merkley said in a statement.
Democrats have opposed funding for Trump’s signature immigration crackdown absent reforms they have sought since federal immigration agents killed US citizens in separate incidents in Minnesota in January.
Republicans have said federal funding for ballroom security is needed to ensure presidential safety, citing an April incident in which an alleged gunman is accused of storming a black-tie media gala in Washington that Trump attended.
The administration has said the ballroom will modernize infrastructure, bolster security and ease strain on the White House, which often relies on temporary outdoor structures to host large events. Trump has said the ballroom will be completed around September 2028, near the end of his second term in office.
Democrats, hoping to win control of Congress in November’s midterm elections, are seizing on Republican support of the ballroom to portray Trump’s party as out of touch with the cost-of-living concerns of Americans at a time of rising energy costs driven by the Iran war he and Israel launched in February.
Trump last year ordered the demolition of the White House’s East Wing – constructed in 1902 during Theodore Roosevelt’s presidency and expanded four decades later during Franklin Roosevelt’s presidency – to make way for his ballroom.
The National Trust for Historic Preservation, a nonprofit organization, filed a lawsuit challenging the project, arguing that neither the president nor the National Park Service, which manages the White House grounds, possessed the authority to tear down the historic structure or erect a major new facility without explicit congressional approval.
A US appeals court in April allowed construction to continue after the judge handling the National Trust lawsuit issued an order halting the project.
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Bulgaria Wins Eurovision Song Contest, Israel Comes Second Again
Noam Bettan, representing Israel, performs “Michelle” during the Grand Final of the 2026 Eurovision Song Contest in Vienna, Austria, May 16, 2026. REUTERS/Lisa Leutner
Bulgaria won the Eurovision Song Contest for the first time on Saturday in a final overshadowed by five countries’ boycott over Gaza, claiming a dramatic victory despite another big public vote for Israel that again secured it second place.
The garish and usually good-natured competition involving pop acts from countries across Europe and beyond, now in its 70th year, was plunged into crisis by a dispute over Israel’s military offensive in Gaza, a response to the Hamas-led attack on October 7, 2023.
The public broadcasters of heavyweights Spain, the Netherlands and Ireland, as well as Iceland and Slovenia, chose not to take part in protest at Israel’s participation.
Israel has alleged a global smear campaign against it. Its performance at the final was not, however, marred by any obvious protests, unlike Tuesday’s semi-final.
“This is unbelievable. I don’t even know what’s going on right now,” Bulgaria’s entrant Dara told a press conference after winning with her thumping, crowd-pleasing dance track “Bangaranga” that avoided politics altogether.
The song touches on themes of empowerment and surrendering to the night. It also left many puzzled as to its meaning.
“Bangaranga is a feeling that everybody gets in themselves. It’s the moment that you choose to be in love and not fear,” Dara said when asked to explain the song in the “green room” where artists await the results.
“This is a special energy… Once you feel (at) one with nature and your universe, you feel the harmony that you can be whatever you want to be and that everything is possible,” she said.
BOOS WERE HEARD AT ISRAEL’S RESULT
Israel’s effort, trilingual love song “Michelle,” stirred less controversy than its entry last year, which was sung by a survivor of the October 7 attack.
Some booing from the audience was audible when Israel’s massive points haul from the public vote sent it surging up the table from eighth place, similarly to 2025, when it also finished second but much closer to the winner than this year.
Israeli public broadcaster KAN received a formal warning from organizers a week ago over videos posted online in which Bettan courted votes too aggressively, after a similar controversy involving Israel last year.
KAN said it plays by the rules and the videos were immediately taken down.
Finland’s entry, “Liekinheitin,” or Flamethrower, a love song in Finnish featuring violinist Linda Lampenius and pop singer Pete Parkkonen on a burning set, was the favorite this year, followed by Australia’s “Eclipse,” a celestially themed love ballad sung by national pop star Delta Goodrem.
In the end, Australia came fourth and Finland sixth.
ONLY MINOR PROTESTS IN VIENNA
The boycotts cut the number of contest entries to 35, the fewest since 2003, which will almost certainly have reduced the global television viewership of an event that last year was estimated at 166 million people, more than the Super Bowl’s 128 million.
The mood in the Austrian capital has been subdued, with protests over Israel’s participation drawing only small crowds. Police anticipated “blockades and disruption attempts” on Saturday that did not materialize.
There was a brief disruption during Tuesday’s semi-final, when one protester chanted “Stop, stop the genocide” and “Free, free Palestine” within range of a television microphone and was ejected along with three others for disrupting the show.
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Israel’s Economy Shrinks in First Quarter but Seen Rebounding After Iran War
People sit at an outdoor restaurant where Israeli flags are displayed, amid the ongoing conflict between Hamas and Israel, in Tel Aviv, Israel, July 12, 2024. REUTERS/Eloisa Lopez
Israel’s economy began 2026 with a slowdown, hit by war with Iran, but growth is expected to recover as long as the conflict does not reignite.
Gross domestic product contracted at an annualized rate of 3.3 percent in the first three months of 2026, the Central Bureau of Statistics said on Sunday, less severe than a 4 percent drop forecast in a Reuters poll of economists.
Israel’s economy grew 2.9 percent in 2025 and was expected to bounce back in 2026 to more than 5 percent growth after a ceasefire in October ended major fighting in the two-year Gaza war.
But growth took a hit after the US and Israel launched strikes against Iran on February 28, resulting in weeks of ballistic missile fire from Iran that closed schools and dampened business activity along with consumer spending.
“The Israeli economy began the year with strong momentum, with rapid growth in the first two months,” said Ofer Klein, head of economics and research at Harel Insurance and Finance.
“The lifting of most restrictions in April and the improvement in economic activity since then… indicate a relatively quick return to positive growth in the current quarter,” said Klein, who raised his growth estimate for this year to 3.5 percent from 3.2 percent.
The Bank of Israel sees 3.8 percent growth this year, down from a 5.2 percent estimate before the Iran war, depending on whether a ceasefire with Iran holds.
Jonathan Katz, chief economist at Leader Capital Markets, said he expected 4 percent growth.
“This is a modest GDP contraction compared to the second quarter of 2025 – the last Iran confrontation in June of 2025 – when GDP contracted by over 10 percent,” he said, adding that industrial exports bounced back in April.
The statistics bureau reported on Friday that the annual inflation rate held steady at 1.9 percent in April. Some economists believe interest rate reductions could resume as early as May 25, the Bank of Israel’s next rate decision meeting.
Israeli financial markets do not trade on Sunday. The shekel has appreciated 20 percent in the past year to 2.91 per dollar, a 33-year high. Tel Aviv share indices are close to all-time highs reached earlier in May.
In the first quarter, consumer spending fell 4.7 percent, exports declined 3.7 percent and government spending shed 4.8 percent. Investment in fixed assets rose 12.6 percent.
On a per capita basis, the economy shrank 4.5 percent in the quarter.