Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

VIRAL PHOTO: Pittsburgh Boy In Kippah Gives Cookies To Police Officer

The boy is wearing a Pittsburgh Pirates kippah and glasses, and he’s sheltering in the arm of a Pittsburgh police officer to whom he’s given a Tupperware container full of what looks like homemade cookies.

There’s also a handwritten note, from Lily, 6, and Mikey, 9: “Thank you for keeping the Jews in the neighborhood safe,” it says, and “Thank you for risking your lives.”

The world knows these details because, on the Sunday afternoon following the deadly shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, CBS Radio News correspondent Bill Rekhopf tweeted an image of a young boy gifting a local policeman cookies and a handwritten thank you note.

“Man, is this picture ever #Pittsburgh,” Rekhopf wrote.

The heartwarming image racked up over 1,000 re-tweets and 3.5 thousand likes on Twitter. Rekhopf, who is based in D.C. grew up in Pittsburgh and previously worked as a news anchor for its local CBS affiliate, KDKA.

PJ Grisar is the Forward’s culture intern. He can be reached at [email protected].

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.