Designed by architects Rena Wandel-Hoefer and Wolfgang Lorch, the New Main Synagogue, or Ohel Jakob, is a box-shaped travertine stone building with a glass cube on top. The name Ohel Jakob means Jacob's Tent in Hebrew. The building is meant to symbolize Moses's journey through the desert, with the glass cube representing a tent.
The original synagogue was destroyed by Nazis during Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass) in 1938. The New Main Synagogue was built between 2004 and 2006 and was inaugurated on the 68th anniversary of Kristallnacht in 2006. An underground tunnel between the synagogue and a Jewish museum houses a memorial to Jews killed in the Holocaust.
