NONFICTION - June 16, 1991

THE SEARCH FOR GOD AT HARVARD by Ari L. Goldman (Times Books/Random House: $20; 283 pp.). When Ari Goldman enrolled at the Harvard Divinity School in 1985, he had good reason to assume he’d do well. Not only was he a religion reporter for the New York Times, and thus had seen a number of religions in action, but he also was an Orthodox Jew (the only one, apparently, on his newspaper). Goldman’s confidence quickly disappeared, however, for on the first day of “World Religions,” the professor said, “If you know one religion . . . you don’t know any”--which is to say, to use Goldman’s words, that it’s “unfair and unwise to try to understand one religion by the yardstick of another.” Goldman tries to avoid that trap, but doesn’t entirely succeed, partly due to the personal nature of this book: “The Search for God at Harvard” is largely an account of Goldman’s relationship with his own faith, which means he gives short shrift to those of others. Goldman devotes individual chapters to Hinduism, Buddhism, Catholicism and Islam, for example, but they average less than 13 pages each, enough space to provide only the most superficial understanding.