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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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The post Brandeis U reeling after bus accident leaves 1 student dead, dozens injured; Jewish students hold vigils appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Lula’s reelection puts the brakes on Latin America’s pro-Israel shift
(JTA) — BUENOS AIRES – Brazilians reelected Luiz Inácio ‘Lula’ da Silva as president, defeating the center-right senator Flavio Bolsonaro, putting the breaks on a regional shift toward closer ties with Israel.
The current president, a left-wing leader of Partido dos Trabalhadores (Workers Party), obtained 51.79% of the valid votes, while Bolsonaro received 48.21%.
Bolsonaro, of the Liberal Party, had pledged a close diplomatic partnership with Israel and cultivated ties with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, while Lula has become a critic of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. Bolsonaro said he did not accept the election results, although it is not clear how he could challenge them.
In January 2024, Lula’s government endorsed South Africa’s decision to bring a genocide case against Israel before the International Court of Justice. A month later, Lula compared Palestinian suffering in Gaza to Hitler’s murder of the Jews, triggering a diplomatic crisis between Brazil and Israel. Brazil’s Jewish umbrella organization, CONIB, publicly condemned the comparison as a distortion that offended the memory of Holocaust victims and their descendants.
The remarks were also criticized by the Holocaust Museum of Buenos Aires. Sen. Bolsonaro promised a big shift toward Israel when he spoke on June 28, 2026, in Buenos Aires in a meeting with Jewish leaders. “In 2027, Brazil will not only once again have an ambassador to Israel, but will also take the step of moving its embassy to Israel’s capital, Jerusalem,” he said.
That night he also lauded the 120,000 Jews in Brazil, saying, “They are men and women who rank among the brightest in Brazilian medicine, industry, science, culture and business.”
After Bolsonaro finished ahead of Lula in the first round on Oct. 4, Netanyahu sent a message the following day on X: “Congratulations @FlavioBolsonaro on yesterday’s vote and good luck in the final. I look forward to restoring the extraordinary friendship between Israel and Brazil. Best wishes for your great victory, my friend.”
Since 2023, several Latin American countries have strengthened ties with Israel, in some cases reversing policies adopted by their predecessors, among them:
Argentine President Javier Milei elected in 2023, who makes support for Israel central to his foreign policy and meets with families of hostages Hamas abducted in its deadly Oct. 7, 2023, raid on Israel, which launched the current war;
Bolivian President Rodrigo Paz Pereira, elected in 2025, who restored diplomatic relations with Israel severed by his predecessor;
President Nasry Asfura of Honduras, elected in 2025, who immediately formally recognized Israel’s new ambassador, a process his predecessor left in limbo;
Chilean President José Antonio Kast, elected in 2025, who is rebuilding ties with Israel diminished by his predecessor;
and Colombian President Abelardo de la Espriella, elected in May, who restored diplomatic ties with Israel severed by his predecessor, sent his foreign minister to inaugurate an embassy in Jerusalem and pulled out of the ICJ genocide case against Israel.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Lula’s reelection puts the brakes on Latin America’s pro-Israel shift appeared first on The Forward.
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In anti-Muslim speech, Trump says Jews who support El-Sayed should be ‘ashamed’
(JTA) — President Donald Trump disparaged Jewish voters who support Abdul El-Sayed, Michigan’s Democratic Senate nominee, at a rally in Port Huron on Sunday.
“Any Jewish person that supports this guy should be ashamed of themselves,” Trump told some 4,000 supporters in the city north of Detroit, where he stumped for Republican nominee Mike Rogers. “You should never speak to them again.”
Hundreds of Michigan Jews have pledged to vote for El-Sayed, who polls indicate is narrowly leading Rogers in a race key to determining control of the Senate. Another subset of Jews has pressured El-Sayed, a staunch critic of Israel, to defend “Jewish safety — including for Zionist Jews” and “Jewish sovereignty in Israel.” Still others have urged their community members to reject El-Sayed outright and back Rogers.
El-Sayed opposes U.S. military aid to Israel, saying the country has committed genocide in Gaza and is “not an ally.” Those positions divided the Democratic party during his primary campaign against pro-Israel U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens, whom he narrowly bested in August. A former public health official, El-Sayed has also emphasized affordability in healthcare, housing and education. He has made a concentrated push to reach undecided Jewish voters in the homestretch before the Nov. 3 midterm election, hiring a Jewish outreach director last week.
Trump has in the past accused Jews who vote for Democrats of being “disloyal to Jewish people” and “disloyal to Israel.”
He said at the Port Huron rally that he is “polling at 99% in Israel,” which will hold national elections on Tuesday.
Trump did not cite evidence for the claim, which is unsupported by publicly available surveys. While he has historically scored high popularity among Israelis, a poll by the Jewish People Policy Institute in June found the Israeli public’s trust in him was declining. The poll said that 12% of Israelis reported having a great deal of trust in Trump, down from 21% in May, while the share of Israelis with complete distrust in him rose from 32% to 37%.
Trump joined his comments about Jews and Israel to anti-Muslim rhetoric about El-Sayed, who would become the first Muslim in the Senate if he is elected.
Trump baselessly called El-Sayed a “jihadist Muslim Brotherhood member” who was “on the side of the terrorists,” adding that he would “have to go through a metal detector before he’s allowed to go into the Senate.”
He threatened that “if Abdul and the Democrats win, they will open the floodgates and invite hordes of jihadists to our shores, creating a nightmare of violence and terror until you cannot even have a Christmas.”
Trump claimed that El-Sayed’s half sister, Eman Abdelhadi, celebrated the Hamas attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. On the first anniversary of the attack, Abdelhadi posted a video that said, “no matter how great the brutality, the oppression, the intensity of what we’re going through, the horizon of justice is just around the corner,” according to The New York Times. She did not directly mention or celebrate the violence.
Trump also said that El-Sayed’s mother had “worked for an organization that gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda.” A Times investigation reported that El-Sayed’s mother worked as a nurse in Missouri for a Muslim aid group that was later designated by the U.S. government as a supporter of terrorist groups. She was never accused of wrongdoing.
El-Sayed’s campaign has said that he “disagrees” with his sister on “a number of political positions and the rhetoric she’s chosen to use, including on foreign policy.” He was raised by his father and stepmother and has said that he had little relationship with his biological mother while growing up.
Former President Barack Obama campaigned with El-Sayed in Detroit on Saturday, saying the candidate was “fighting for change, real change, that will get money out of politics and put money in your pocket.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post In anti-Muslim speech, Trump says Jews who support El-Sayed should be ‘ashamed’ appeared first on The Forward.
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CAIR Connecticut urges Greenwich schools to stop using Eisner Camp over Israel ties
(JTA) — GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass. – Greenwich Public Schools in Connecticut said it would proceed with a planned fall trip for sixth graders at a Jewish camp in Massachusetts as planned this week, despite pressure from a Muslim advocacy organization over the camp’s Israeli symbols and Israel-related programming.
CAIR Connecticut, the state chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, objected to the trip, saying that programming at Eisner Camp in Great Barrington “incorporates connections to Israel,” the chapter’s board chair Farhan Memon wrote in a letter to Greenwich Superintendent of Schools Toni Jones dated Oct. 13.
The four-day Greenwich Schools field trip was organized by the Outdoor Classroom project, which works with seven locations in New England, including Eisner. Four of the camps are affiliated with Christian organizations, and two have no religious affiliation. With its clients, Outdoor Classroom coordinates nature-related learning programs for kids.
Memon wrote that some parents in Greenwich had viewed a video and photos of previous school events at Eisner and “identified Israeli flags and yellow ribbons prominently displayed in spaces used during school visits.”
“At the very least, spaces used by Greenwich students on any school trip should be free of national and political displays,” Memon wrote.
Eisner director Paul Isserles said in a statement shared with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency: “We welcome Outdoor Classroom to use our camp facilities. Throughout the year many outside organizations rent our facilities for various programs. URJ Eisner Camp is proud to have an Israeli flag displayed for our camp programs.”
When it comes to visiting groups, “Frankly, we are not regularly asked to do anything to remove those symbols or to cover them,” said Union for Reform Judaism president Rabbi Rick Jacobs in a telephone interview with JTA. “Because to be honest, we wouldn’t.”
Answering Memon’s letter on Oct. 14, Jones wrote in an email that her school district “acknowledges that individuals and families have vastly different views regarding global events” and that it intends to “provide an inclusive and safe educational environment for all Greenwich Public School students, including when they are on field trips under our care.”
She added that she had “made it clear to a few families that we will not take a political or religious stand.” JTA has seen both the CAIR letter and the email response.
CAIR Connecticut did not respond to JTA’s query.
CAIR’s national website says the organization promotes interfaith dialogue and “condemns all acts of violence against civilians by any individual, group or state.”
The Reform movement founded the 600-acre camp in 1958 as the Joseph Eisner Camp Institute for Living Judaism. It is located in the Berkshire Hills south of the town center of Great Barrington.
It is one of more than a dozen of the movement’s overnight camps in the North America. Many of those camps are rented throughout the year by groups that have nothing to do with Judaism, URJ’s Rabbi Jacobs said. “If a group rents the camp, they come up with their own agenda,” he said.
He added, “There are flags and other symbols of Judaism and of Israel in our camps, and we’re proud of that.”
Some parents had raised concerns about the venue as early as March. CAIR urged the district to stop using the camp in the Oct. 14 letter.
Removing decorations from the camp would not be enough, he said, noting that parents were upset after seeing promotional material about Eisner bringing Jewish campers to visit Israeli army bases under the Gadna, an Israeli military youth program.
A July 2019 post on Eisner Camp’s website says a group of participants in its Israel trip chose Gadna, stayed at an army base, practiced drills and learned to shoot at a target.
“URJ Eisner Camp participants who go to Israel have not participated in Gadna since 2023,” camp director Isserles said in a statement provided to JTA. “Our Israel programming at camp and in Israel is focused on Jewish identity, community, education, and connection to Israel.”
What CAIR is saying is that “A Jewish institution can be an unfit place for public-school children because it is visibly Jewish and identifies openly with Israel,” wrote blogger and Eisner alumnus Rabbi Jeff Salkin in his “Unfiltered” Substack on Oct. 19.
“A Jewish institution should not have to hide its Jewish identity to count as a fit place for other people’s children. You would not ask a church camp to remove a cross, or a Muslim camp to take down a crescent. A standard that demands such hiding makes Jewish identity itself the problem,” Salkin wrote.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post CAIR Connecticut urges Greenwich schools to stop using Eisner Camp over Israel ties appeared first on The Forward.
