The Forward’s Top 10 Videos of 2012

Image by nate lavey

This year the Forward committed to telling Jewish stories visually and we’ve produced more video than ever before. So to get a sense of where we’ve been, here’s our top ten videos from 2012:
Without a doubt our most popular video was our profile of young Naomi Kutin, a Jewish girl from New Jersey who is setting powerlifting records, despite weighing less than 100 pounds. The story was picked up and passed around far beyond the Jewish world and popped up on Buzzfeed, the Huffington Post and even El Globo.
We’ve used the format of “video profile” a number of times throughout the year to introduce you to a diverse range of people: from a Hasidic ice cream truck driver with his own Hebrew jingle, to an unorthodox Orthodox political candidate dressed in pink, to a Jewish lawyer who moonlights as Santa Claus.
While spending time with all of these people has been fascinating, for me the most memorable videos have been about communities facing major change. In April I travelled to Tunisia and met with members of the small Jewish community in Tunis and Djerba to see how they were faring a year after a revolution swept out a dictator and swept in a moderate Islamist government.
A day after Hurricane Sandy, and much closer to home, I took a cab to Coney Island with our reporter Josh-Nathan Kazis to survey the scene at Sea Gate, a community on the western tip of the neighborhood. I didn’t have any of my normal video equipment, which was trapped in our Manhattan offices, but with a still camera and audio recorded on Josh’s cell phone, we were able to publish a simple, but powerful document of the storm.
Our videos have sometimes been controversial. In April we published a video of the singer Neshama Carlebach reworking the song “Hatikvah” to include the sentiments of Israel’s Arab population. While many people found the song to be beautiful and heartfelt, others were quite vocal about their opposition to our publishing an altered version of the Israeli national anthem. But as Jane Eisner in her editorial wrote, “the conversation, like the song, belongs to all of us” and I’m happy to have been a part of it.
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a gift today!
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Most Popular
- 1
Opinion The dangerous Nazi legend behind Trump’s ruthless grab for power
- 2
Opinion A Holocaust perpetrator was just celebrated on US soil. I think I know why no one objected.
- 3
Culture Did this Jewish literary titan have the right idea about Harry Potter and J.K. Rowling after all?
- 4
Opinion I first met Netanyahu in 1988. Here’s how he became the most destructive leader in Israel’s history.
In Case You Missed It
-
Opinion Gaza and Trump have left the Jewish community at war with itself — and me with a bad case of alienation
-
Fast Forward Trump administration restores student visas, but impact on pro-Palestinian protesters is unclear
-
Fast Forward Deborah Lipstadt says Trump’s campus antisemitism crackdown has ‘gone way too far’
-
Fast Forward 5 Jewish senators accuse Trump of using antisemitism as ‘guise’ to attack universities
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
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 comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag 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.