Education is paramount in religious Judaism, and adults are perpetually searching for better ways to interest the younger generation in learning Torah and halacha. Sometimes, engaging young people in education seems like a Herculean task, but there is a community that has managed to succeed in doing just that—science educational channels on YouTube. Perhaps those involved in limudei kodesh can learn from these channels how to better engage their audiences in learning.
Most people know YouTube as the home of cat videos, makeup tutorials, toy unboxings and those half-hour-long videos where you watch someone else play video games (if you’ve never heard of these, bless your soul). But an aspect of YouTube with which not everyone is familiar is the niche communities of educational channels—each of which has millions of subscribers—like SciShow, Vsauce, Veritasium and MinutePhysics, which manage to be entertaining while simultaneously teaching science. It almost goes without saying that successful channels are polished and well-researched, but so are plenty of other Jewish and secular platforms that have not been as successful. How have these channels risen above the rest? What strategies have they utilized to become prominent? I am no economist or statistician, but I have assembled three strategies I believe are instrumental in the success of these channels.
This may seem obvious to people who have experience with YouTube, but one of the greatest things about the website is that all of its videos are funded on advertisement revenue, and there is no cost to subscribe to any channel—a viewer can watch thousands of videos without paying a dime. This gives channels access to a wide audience that can benefit from their content, including young people who do not have much money or are wary of spending it. (SciShow, Veritasium and MinutePhysics all supplement the ad revenue with donations from their wealthier supporters, but there is never a requirement for subscribers to pay anything.)
One of the Jewish educational video platforms that comes closest to meeting the popularity of the science channels is Aleph Beta. Founded and run by Rabbi David Fohrman, Aleph Beta videos present novel analytical approaches to Torah and Jewish holidays and hold viewers’ attention with their colorful animations. But one major obstacle in the way of Aleph Beta attracting more viewers is that its videos are not all free. Some of its videos are freely available on YouTube, and an unpaid subscriber to Aleph Beta’s website will net two free videos a month, but a committed follower of Aleph Beta will quickly find that most of its videos lie behind paywalls. This limits Aleph Beta’s appeal to young people, who often are not swimming in cash.
This step is important because of how YouTube’s algorithms (and the human brain) run. As a general rule, people want everything around them to be directly relevant to them. If a student is sitting in class, and the teacher spends a significant amount of time addressing other people’s problems or reviewing material that the student already knows, he or she will quickly become bored. YouTube’s algorithm works the same way. If YouTube notices that a significant percentage of the videos on a channel do not interest a user, the algorithm will “get bored” of that channel and stop recommending its videos to that user.
What are the practical ramifications of this? It means that a “science video” channel should create only science videos, because subscribers to that channel want to watch science videos and might not be interested in anything else. (There are a couple of exceptions to this, channels whose videos are so well done that their subscribers will watch anything they create, but they are the exception, not the rule.) If a science channel dilutes its science content with videos about literature, for example, YouTube will see that subscribers are no longer interested in that channel’s content, and the algorithm will begin to phase that channel out.
Aish.com is possibly the largest creator of Jewish content in the world, but its YouTube channel, AishVideo, has a problem—it is too content-diverse. The channel contains videos in a wide variety of genres, from educational videos about Jewish traditions to Jewish covers of secular songs, to motivational speeches. Very few people are likely to be interested in every single video on AishVideo, which leads YouTube to think that the channel is boring, even if it is not.
So what can Aish do to avoid conflict with the YouTube algorithm? Perhaps Aish can take a lesson from the most popular educational video channel in the world: Vsauce, with over 12 million subscribers. Vsauce is not just a single channel—it is a network of four independent channels, each of which caters to a slightly different audience. Vsauce itself explains scientific and psychological phenomena, Vsauce2 creates mind-blowing videos about new technology, Vsauce3 analyzes the junction between science and pop culture and D.O.N.G. introduces viewers to all the weirdest internet sites and merchandise. This way, there is a separate channel for every type of science/technology enthusiast. Aish could do the same thing, splitting itself into a separate channel for each type of video it produces. While none of the smaller channels would match the popularity of the original, all the channels combined could reach a vast audience.
Science channels know that most people find it difficult to watch a talking head drone into a camera for 10 minutes straight, so they spice up their videos. SciShow, Veritasium and MinutePhysics all have their hosts talk extremely quickly—approximately 190-200 words per minute, far faster than the 100-130 words per minute that is average among Americans.
Michael Stevens of Vsauce does not talk particularly quickly, but he keeps his videos captivating by intentionally following tangents from the video’s main topic, relating interesting, unexpected information to his audience.
And no successful channel keeps the camera in the same place for too long. SciShow, Veritasium and VSauce all frequently cut away from video of the talking host to relevant pictures, animations, words, science experiments or occasionally even video of the talking host against a different backdrop, just to keep the the audience interested. Henry Reich of MinutePhysics avoids the problem altogether by animating every second of his videos, keeping his audience visually occupied.
With these strategies in mind, it is no wonder that the most popular Jewish educational videos online are the animated videos of Rabbi Dr. Lord Jonathan Sacks, each of which has been viewed over 25,000 times. One of the three videos, “Why I Am a Jew,” has been viewed a whopping 210,000 times! Rabbi Sacks’ videos are free for all to watch, and he talks quickly (not as quickly as SciShow or MinutePhysics, but more quickly than average) and uses clever animations to hold his viewers’ attention while he gets his point across. If only these animated videos had their own channel, and there was more of them, imagine how much limud Rabbi Sacks could do.
By Tani Greengart
Tani Greengart is a rising senior at TABC and editor-in-chief of Kol Torah. He is currently a summer intern at The Jewish Link.
