[5] At the April 1958 ceremony formally dedicating the new Givat Ram campus and opening 21 new campus building, Dr. George S. Wise, chairman of the university's International Board of Governors, noted that the synagogue was one of ten buildings constructed with the help of donations from both organizations and individual donors in the U.S.[6] The synagogue was consecrated on August 7, 1957.

[7] Remarks by Ben-Zvi and other Israeli officials praised Goldstein as a man of spirit and action, who had dedicated his life to the Jewish people.

[5] As part of the ceremony, Joseph Klausner, professor emeritus at Hebrew University, opened the Torah ark.

[10] The exterior design has been described as one that "takes the form of a gentle concrete puffball hovering just above the surface of the rock, rather as if it had been tossed there by the wind," with the suggestion that "the spiritual world (of the dome) passing silently around the temporal one (of the floor) without ever quite meeting it.

"[4] A description linked to a 2005 retrospective of architect David Resnick noted that "It gives the impression of hovering in the air and being rooted in the ground at the same time - a totally modernistic building that exploits new technologies, but evokes local historical associations.

[10] In 1961 a special ceremony was held at the synagogue to accept a Torah scroll contributed by a group of tourists from the United States.