This Friday will mark the beginning of the Jewish New Year when Rosh Hashanah begins at sundown.

“I’ll be here, spending the holiday with my parents,” Molly Krueger, a professional chef and lifelong resident of the Upper East Side, said. “We’ll be with my aunt and uncle and then my cousins as well. So, it’ll be lovely.”

For Krueger, celebrating Rosh Hashanah is always special because it involves services at Manhattan’s Temple Emanu-El with friends and family, followed by a home-cooked dinner, which this year.

“So, I find that Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur [are] just a more spiritual time of the year for me,” Krueger said. “It’s a time of reflection and taking stock of how the year went and what you are looking forward to in the year to come and how you can be better a person.”

Rabbi Joshua Davidson of Temple Emanu-El said this Reform synagogue, which seats 2,500, is expected to reach full capacity as worshippers gather for the Jewish New Year.

“Rosh Hashanah is actually also called Yom HaZikaron, the Day of Remembrance,” Davidson said. “In the Jewish framework, it asks God to remember the covenant with the Israelites at Mount Sinai and, in that loving remembrance, renew us for a New Year of life and health.”

This year the start of Rosh Hashanah coincides with the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terror attacks. For Davidson, that makes this year’s holiday even more meaningful.

“During the service, we’ll be honoring the first responders who committed their safety and, in so many instances, their lives to the rest of us, and we’ll be remembering all who perished that day,” he said. “For those of us who were in New York on 9/11, that is a day that shaped us and certainly shaped this congregation.”

One ritual that is closely identified with Rosh Hashanah is the blowing of the Shofar which serves as a spiritual wake-up call.

Rabbi Joanna Samuels, the CEO of the Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan on the Upper West Side, told NY1 that one of her favorite Rosh Hashanah traditions involves food.

“I love that taste of dipping apple in honey and the eating of it around my table,” Samuels said.

Over the last few decades, the introduction of social media, email and text messaging has led to fewer people giving out tangible Rosh Hashanah greeting cards like these pop-up cards that were popular in the early 1900s.

“Printed probably around 1907, it was printed in Germany for an American market,” Gabriel Goldstein, the curator of Yeshiva University Museum, said as he showed an example. “It’s a way of wising a new year and a new technology of color printing and tissue honeycomb.”

But one tradition that does remain is wishes for the new year.

“I’m hopeful for the good health and joy of our community, [which] has been through so much in these last years,” Samuels said. “And I’m hopeful that we continue to move toward a world of greater peace and dignity for everyone.”

“It’s like our big holiday,” Krueger said. “It’s the start of the year, so it’s very exciting.”

A time made even more special when shared with loved ones and community.