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This kosher cafe in Riverdale attracts a diverse clientele from across the Bronx
(New York Jewish Week) — When Emily Weisberg arrived in the Bronx neighborhood of Riverdale in 2014, she was surprised that the coffee options didn’t extend far beyond Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts.
So she set out to create a cafe of her own, one that would not only serve up third-wave coffee but also function as a community hub outside of the relatively insular worlds of her kids’ daycare or her synagogue, the open Orthodox Hebrew Institute of Riverdale. She wanted a place where she could get to know everyone who lived in the neighborhood.
Nearly a decade later, Moss Cafe stands out the northern Bronx neighborhood — both because of its vivid mural of carrots, beets and red onions that pops on its otherwise drab block, and because of its unusual combination of seasonal foods, ethical practices and kosher supervision.
“Our clientele is really diverse, and I think that’s my greatest accomplishment here,” Weisberg told the New York Jewish Week. “We made a restaurant that everyone wants to come to that also happens to be kosher.”
Much of what a visitor to Moss encounters would not be out of place in any hip, upscale cafe. A selection of seasonal pastries, all baked in house, changes throughout the year; flowers in mason jars brighten every table. Moms with yoga mats tucked under their arms grab lattes to go and high schoolers cluster around the window seat with their laptops. The shakshuka is fragrant with garlic and za’atar, and chef Brian Engel’s kale salad, enriched with parmesan and pepitas and studded with roasted beets, is as good as any in the city. The restaurant recently added dinner service, with a menu including a “picky plate” designed to accommodate families.
At the same time, the cafe is strictly kosher — it serves fish and dairy, but not meat, under the supervision of the Vaad of Riverdale — and closes on Shabbat. Its bakery case includes fluffy challahs on Friday mornings, and special catering menus feature traditional foods for Jewish holidays. Customers can often be overheard discussing Jewish texts, the neighborhood’s multiple day schools and upcoming trips to Israel.
On a recent breezy April day — the first spring morning that rhubarb appeared in the cafe’s farm deliveries — Moss was jammed with neighborhood regulars and visitors from all walks of life. Samuel Marder, a nonagenarian violinist and Holocaust survivor — whose wife, the pianist Sonia Vargas, was Riverdale native Regina Spektor’s music teacher — sat at a table adjacent to Sage Vasquez and Diamond Wynn, two culinary professionals from the South Bronx. It was their first visit, but they discovered that a friend worked at Moss and felt at home.
Moss’ pastry counter is always filled with seasonal items. (Ben Resnick)
“I see a lot of people who look like me, and that’s important when I go out to eat,” says Vasquez, a pastry chef. “The neighborhood is like a breath of fresh air from the South Bronx.”
Moss also stands out for its commitment to mutual aid in the borough. Case in point: Few other independent neighborhood coffee shops employ a dedicated director of community outreach. Tess Watts, who has that role at Moss, started at the cafe as a server while she was a student at nearby Manhattan College. Now, she leads Moss’s collaborations with neighborhood nonprofits such as the Riverdale Community House.
Last year, the cafe donated nearly $11,000 of its revenue to local nonprofits and charities, and raised an additional $2,900 for those groups. It also donated more than $7,400 worth of excess food to local community fridges, putting food directly into the hands of those who needed it. Watts says as a community-oriented cafe located in a well-to-do enclave in New York’s poorest borough, Moss has a responsibility to help its neighbors, not just its customers.
“If your mission is to build community around food, you can’t discount the ways that the community is impacted by food,” she said. “You have to look at food insecurity, you have to look at economic inequality. In order to operate a restaurant and call ourselves ethical, we have to do it.”
Moss Cafe sits on a nondescript block in the commercial heart of Riverdale in New York City. (Ike Allen)
Moss has stuck with that commitment since it opened in 2015. Weisberg, the co-owner and face of the cafe, was raised in the rural Midwest, where she got a job at 16 in a small-town coffee shop. That cafe — Perc Place in Hartford, Wisconsin — gave her a lasting appreciation for the communal spaces that coffee shops can provide. Even in a small heartland town like hers, many of the cafe’s workers were immigrants from Latin America, and people from all walks of life chatted together at the tables over cups brewed from beans grown in the highlands of Guatemala and Colombia.
“Living in a place that was not very diverse, I always longed for that,” Weisberg said. “This was a special way to connect with where I was and also to open up my world, through food and coffee and through my coworkers.”
Weisberg lived for a time in Peru and took classes in Latin American Studies at the University of Wisconsin, intending to eventually practice immigration law. While living in Madison, Wisconsin, she worked at restaurants and frequented the local farmers market where, she said, “local food was a thing before it was on a national scale.”
At the same time, her spiritual interests steered her toward Judaism — she was raised Catholic — and she converted at 21, after studying with a campus Chabad rabbi and rebbetzin. In Madison, she also met Alex Weisberg, who had been raised by a secular Jewish family in New York’s Westchester County but became more interested in religion after a Birthright trip.
The two got married in Jerusalem and lived there for three years, where Weisberg opened a coffee and pastry window from their home, where customers would sit on chairs set up on the cobblestone street.
That was the experience she hoped to recreate in Riverdale after they moved to New York City in 2014 — Weisberg felt she could help her community as a good employer. The ethical mission of Moss, she said, starts with pay and conditions for its own employees.
Snapshots of Moss Cafe’s menu and interior. (Courtesy of Moss Cafe)
“These people are the heart and soul of our neighborhoods,” she said. “It’s true that I opened Moss, but Moss is really the people who are, day in and day out, showing up at 4 in the morning to bake things, or scrubbing tables at 4 p.m. on a Friday.”
But Moss also stays afloat because its entire team is committed to the ethical mission of the cafe, including its close relationships with small New York and Pennsylvania farms — during the early days of the pandemic, Weisberg helped support farms and her own business by selling produce boxes from the cafe — and postpartum meals for new mothers through the Bronx doula groups the Birthing Place and Ashe Birthing Services.
With a large and growing Orthodox community in Riverdale, it was important to Weisberg for Moss Cafe to be strictly kosher. But while the certification allows some diners who wouldn’t otherwise be able to eat there, not all customers come looking for a kosher dining experience.
“I grew up Jewish and all the Passover and kosher food can be very bland,” said Brian Silbert, a former Manhattanite who plans to open an ice cream shop nearby. “This is savory and flavorful without it suffering. Across the board, everything is done right.”
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Trump Issues New Warning to Tehran, Iran Calls US Peace Proposals ‘Unrealistic’
A blaze after Israel’s Fire and Rescue Service said that an industrial building and a fuel tanker at Israel’s Oil Refineries were hit by debris from an intercepted Iranian missile, amid the US-Israel conflict with Iran, in Haifa, Israel, March 30, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Rami Shlush
US President Donald Trump warned on Monday that Iran‘s energy plants and oil wells would be obliterated if it did not open the Strait of Hormuz, after Tehran described US peace proposals as “unrealistic” and fired waves of missiles at Israel.
Israel’s military said two drones from Yemen had also been intercepted on Monday, two days after the Iran-aligned Houthis entered the war by firing missiles at Israel, and that Lebanon’s Hezbollah had fired rockets at Israel.
Israeli forces carried out missile strikes on what they called military infrastructure in Tehran and infrastructure used by Iran-backed Hezbollah in Beirut, leaving black smoke hanging over the Lebanese capital.
Turkey’s defense ministry said a ballistic missile launched from Iran entered Turkish airspace before being shot down by NATO air and missile defenses deployed in the eastern Mediterranean, the fourth such incident since the start of the war.
US REINFORCEMENTS ARRIVE IN REGION
Thousands of soldiers from the US Army’s elite 82nd Airborne Division have started arriving in the Middle East, two US officials told Reuters on Monday, part of a reinforcement that would expand Trump‘s options to include the deployment of forces inside Iranian territory.
Tehran remained defiant in the month-old war, which began with US-Israeli attacks on Iran on Feb. 28 and has spread across the region, killing thousands, disrupting energy supplies and hitting the global economy. The majority of those reported killed were in Iran and Lebanon, and many were civilians.
Iran confirmed on Monday the death of Revolutionary Guards Navy Commander Alireza Tangsiri, the latest of its leaders killed including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has been replaced by his son Mojtaba Khamenei.
The Iranians have effectively blocked the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway which normally carries about a fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas supplies.
Iran said on Monday it had received US peace proposals via intermediaries, following talks on Sunday between the foreign ministers of Pakistan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey.
But Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei said the proposals were “unrealistic, illogical, and excessive.”
“Our position is clear. We are under military aggression. Therefore, all our efforts and strength are focused on defending ourselves,” he told a press conference.
Soon after Baghaei’s remarks, Trump said in a social media post that the United States was in talks with a “more reasonable regime” to end the war in Iran, but he also issued a new warning over the Strait of Hormuz.
“Great progress has been made but, if for any reason a deal is not shortly reached, which it probably will be, and if the Hormuz Strait is not immediately ‘Open for Business,’ we will conclude our lovely ‘stay’ in Iran by blowing up and completely obliterating all of their Electric Generating Plants, Oil Wells and Kharg Island,” Trump wrote.
Trump also threatened to attack the desalination plants that supply clean water in Iran. He said last week he would pause attacks on Iran‘s energy plants for 10 days, which would be until April 6, US time.
A Pakistani security official, whose country is trying to mediate in the war, said that at this stage it appeared unlikely there would be direct US-Iran talks this week.
Baghaei also said Iran‘s parliament was reviewing a possible exit from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which recognizes the right to develop, research, produce, and use nuclear energy as long as nuclear weapons are not pursued.
Trump has cited preventing Iran obtaining nuclear weapons as one of the reasons for attacking Iran on Feb. 28. Tehran denies it is seeking a nuclear arsenal.
On Sunday, Trump said the US and Iran had been meeting “directly and indirectly.” But he has also been sending more US troops to the region and Iran has remained defiant, maintaining its blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.
FEARS OF ESCALATION
Iran has fired on Arab Gulf states during the conflict and war has been reignited between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Two members of the UN peacekeeping mission in Lebanon (UNIFIL) were killed in southern Lebanon on Monday after an explosion of “unknown origin” destroyed their vehicle.
The incident is the second in 24 hours after another UNIFIL peacekeeper was killed when a projectile exploded at one of its positions in a southern Lebanese village.
Brent crude futures pared earlier gains by 1700 GMT on Monday but are on course for a record monthly rise of close to 60 percent.
The Houthis’ attacks on Israel raised the prospect that they could target and block a second important shipping route, the Bab el-Mandeb Strait.
The oil market has all but discounted the prospect of a negotiated end to the war and “is bracing for a sharp escalation in military hostilities,” said Vandana Hari of oil-market provider Vanda Insights.
The Financial Times quoted Trump on Sunday as saying in an interview that the US could seize Kharg Island, from where Iran exports much of its oil.
ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES
The International Monetary Fund warned that war in the Middle East has caused serious disruption to the economies of frontline countries, and is dimming the outlook for many economies that had just started to recover from previous crises.
G7 finance leaders also said they were ready to take “all necessary measures” to safeguard energy market stability and limit broader economic spillovers from recent volatility.
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Spain Closes Airspace to US Planes Involved in Iran War, Defense Minister Says
Spain’s Defense Minister Margarita Robles arrives at the informal EU Defense Ministers’ meeting in Copenhagen, Denmark, Aug. 29, 2025. Photo: Ritzau Scanpix/Thomas Traasdahl via REUTERS
Spain has closed its airspace to US planes involved in attacks on Iran, a step beyond its previous denial of use of jointly-operated military bases, Defense Minister Margarita Robles said on Monday.
“We don’t authorize either the use of military bases or the use of airspace for actions related to the war in Iran,” she told reporters in Madrid.
Spanish newspaper El Pais had first reported the news on Monday, citing military sources.
The closure of the airspace forces military planes to bypass NATO member Spain en route to their targets in the Middle East, but it does not include emergency situations, El Pais added.
“This decision is part of the decision already made by the Spanish government not to participate in or contribute to a war which was initiated unilaterally and against international law,” Economy Minister Carlos Cuerpo said during an interview with radio Cadena Ser when asked if the decision to close Spain‘s airspace could worsen relations with the United States.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has been one of the most vocal opponents of the US and Israeli attacks on Iran, describing them as reckless and illegal.
President Donald Trump has threatened to cut trade with Madrid for denying the US use of Spain‘s bases in the war.
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US Formally Reopens Caracas Embassy as Ties With Venezuela Warm
Venezuela’s interim president Delcy Rodriguez speaks during a press conference, more than a week after the US launched a strike on the country and captured President Nicolas Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores, at Miraflores Palace in Caracas, Venezuela, Jan. 14, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Leonardo Fernandez Viloria
The United States on Monday formally reopened its embassy in Caracas, the State Department said, citing “a new chapter” in diplomatic relations with Venezuela less than three months after US forces seized the country’s then-President Nicolas Maduro in a raid on the capital.
President Donald Trump’s administration has engaged with an interim government led by former Maduro ally Delcy Rodriguez, including on an agreement for the US to sell Venezuelan oil, and has issued sanctions waivers to encourage US investment.
The two countries agreed in early March to re-establish diplomatic relations that were severed in 2019 after the first Trump administration refused to recognize Maduro as the country’s legitimate leader, following a disputed election, and instead recognized an opposition lawmaker as the country’s president.
“Today, we are formally resuming operations at the S. Embassy in Caracas, marking a new chapter in our diplomatic presence in Venezuela,” the State Department said on Monday.
US forces captured Maduro on Jan. 3 after months of heightened tensions between the two countries, setting off a chain of changes in Venezuela. Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, are on trial in New York on drug trafficking charges.
The raid came after the Trump administration said it would reassert US dominance in the Western Hemisphere, but Trump has also cited the success of deposing Maduro as a model for the war with Iran that began last month. The move against Venezuela cut off a major source of oil to Cuba, where the president has also hinted at US military action.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said days after the Caracas raid that Washington would first seek to stabilize Venezuela, then begin a recovery phase where US companies would have access to the country’s energy resources, before finally beginning a political transition.
The Trump administration appointed Ambassador Laura Dogu, a career diplomat with experience in Latin America, to lead engagement with the interim government.
The State Department on March 19 removed a “do not travel” advisory for Venezuela and said Americans were no longer at risk of wrongful detention by authorities there, although it still warns US citizens to reconsider travel due to the risk of crime, kidnapping, terrorism and poor health infrastructure in the country.
The State Department said on Monday that Dogu’s team was restoring the Caracas embassy‘s chancery building “to prepare for the full return of personnel as soon as possible and the eventual resumption of consular services.”
“The resumption of operations at US Embassy Caracas is a key milestone in implementing the President’s three‑phase plan for Venezuela and will strengthen our ability to engage directly with Venezuela’s interim government, civil society, and the private sector,” the State Department said.