I’m a lifestyle editor by day, and I’ve been baking, painting, singing, crafting, writing, and creating since as far back as I can remember. I got my start in media over a decade ago in the colorful headquarters of Martha Stewart Living, brainstorming features for the magazine’s next holiday issue, snacking on gingerbread cookies warm from the test kitchen, and wandering the craft room admiring felt garlands and grapevine wreaths. Most of my assignments involved pitching ideas for holidays I’d never celebrated growing up, and I threw myself into dreaming up Easter brunches, Valentine’s Day dinners, and St Patrick’s Day parties. The attention, care, and creative playfulness our team gave to each of these celebrations was intoxicating. At home, I lit Shabbat candles; at work, I listened to Mariah Carey and stared at glittery pinecones.

As the years went by, I hopped from lifestyle magazine to lifestyle magazine, and my interest in all things creative only grew—but so did a nagging sense of cultural loyalty. A whisper in the back of my mind reminded me that this wasn’t mine, that the eggnog and tinsel belonged to someone else, and that the holidays I actually celebrated remained conspicuously absent from those glossy pages (for the most part, anyway). I longed for somewhere to share and trade ideas about Purim and Passover with the same respect, energy, and sparkle I’d been hired to give Halloween and Easter. After all, it’s not as if Judaism is wanting for elaborate, thousand-year-old holidays to reimagine. Why shouldn’t they, too, get the glossy magazine treatment?

As the years went on, this question began to feel more pressing and less rhetorical. I’m the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors. I felt—and continue to feel—the urgency of this new moment on an intensely personal level. So, on New Year’s Day 2019, I made a resolution to fill the “Jewish holiday inspiration” void once and for all. (Listen, I said we were leaving Valentine’s Day behind. You can pry that secular New Year fresh-start-woo-woo from my cold, vision-board-ing hands.) Armed with a notebook, I sketched out the foundations of a digital hub dedicated to celebrating Jewish life and holidays, a place that would offer Hanukkah DIYs and challah braiding techniques with elegance and accessibility—alongside the dash of whimsy that strews edible flowers behind me wherever I go. And I’m not sure I’d ever believed in anything as much as I believed in that fledgling Squarespace site with its zero, count ’em, zero posts. I could only hope that if I felt this way, someone else did, too.

Within months, it was clear that several someones did—and I was floored. Emails and DMs poured in from readers around the world, filled with photos of their personal takes on ideas I’d shared for this or that Jewish holiday. And then major platforms began to take note: Food Network Magazine and Woman’s Day featured my work in their print editions; I created Seder tables for Bon Appetit and Hulu and Crate & Barrel and Pottery Barn; I spoke about my family’s Hanukkah celebrations on PBS; Good Morning America gave the site a comically brief but totally thrilling blip.

Until the moment I saw my work resonating with readers, I had thought that what bothered me most about seeing so little attention afforded to Jewish joy was the absence of a place to share fresh, creative, un-ironic ideas about the celebrations I love. But I realized that it was actually about feeling connected. For the most part, Jewish people don’t live in places where we’re the majority. If we want to see Jewish joy out in the world, we have to start by building it in our own homes—and inviting each other inside to see and share.