Jewish religious buildings have typically been adaptations of traditional regional types. Following this pattern, the Williams College Jewish Religious Center is a wooden building painted white and given monumental scale by a dominant vertical element. Following the vernacular, the interior is also painted white.

Central to virtually all religious experience is the mountain. The dominant form of this building remembers Mount Moriah and Mount Sinai, while evoking the recent memory of the Holocaust by allusion to the form of the chimney.

Because High Holy Day Services and other events, such as wedding and bar mitzvahs, may require seating up to 300, while typically Friday evening services are for about 50, the sanctuary is expandable. The intimacy and ritual participation by congregants, an essential part of Jewish liturgy, is maintained through both configurations.