Why are distant objects observed in the near infrared? I was reading an article that explains why JWST is a successor to Hubble and not a replacement for Hubble. They explained that Hubble's science pushed astronomers to look at longer wavelength. And then they said:    


  In particular, more distant objects are more highly redshifted, and their light is pushed from the UV and optical into the near-infrared.


So basically to observe the first galaxies, astronomers have to observe in infrared. My question is why distant objects require observations in the infrared? 

Is it because they are at a very large distance from us, so the light has lost a lot of energy on its way so it's detectable in the infrared?
Yes.

When light moves through the expanding space, it loses energy and becomes redshifted. As galaxies form, they a emit a lot of UV light, and are often detected from there emission at the so-called Lyman $\alpha$ light, which has a wavelength of 1216 Å. Galaxies began forming just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang. Since then, the Universe has a expanded by more than a factor of 10 in all direction. The wavelength of the light expands by the same factor, and thus a Lyman $\alpha$ photon emitted in this epoch today has a wavelength of $\sim12,000$ Å, or 1.2 $\mu$m, which is in the infrared.