The Search for God at Harvard

...One fell gravely ill and died, one became a heretic, one went mad, and one, Rabbi Akiba, emerged whole...

...He finds himself ostracized by members of his new Westchester synagogue for whom"the battles I had fought throughout my adult life to remain Orthodox were not seen as battles at all...but as compromises that diminished me in their eyes and somehow threatened the cozy world of the Orthodox...

...Successive chapters guide us through the world's major religions...

...He also provides us with a summary of what he learned in class...

...Goldman chooses not to pursue this seeming contradiction, however...

...He feels distaste for the increasingly rightwing tum of his coreligionists...

...Although the majority of the students were engaged in preparation for ministry, there was a marked diffidence about any expression of Christian faith...

...Whether he emerges whole or a heretic lies in the eye of the beholder...

...488: Commonweal...

...The struggle continues...

...Substitute traditional Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, or any other religion, and there is a profitable lesson for everyone...

...Goldman had imagined that his knowledge of Judaism would provide an advantage in studying and writing about other religions...

...I believe that traditional Judaism is large enough, compassionate enough, forgiving enough, and tolerant enough to encompass the world...

...The presentation here is engaging and sympathetic, if occasionally simplistic...

...However, it is the autobiographical story, woven throughout, that provides the heart of the book, and by far its most interesting part...

...The struggle to reconcile these two identities-as a Sabbath-observant Jew and a professional journalist--is the tension in his life and it provides the underlying theme of his book...

...With detachment and tenderness, he describes the years of his childhood, poring over the Talmud under the strict supervision of the rabbis...

...It was like reading the New York Review of Books and knowing that you would have the time to read each new book reviewed...

...At the same time he alludes to an atmosphere of ideological correctness--both theological and political--at odds with the apparent spirit of tolerance...

...The orchard, in this case, is the perilous world of interreligious dialogue...

...One senses that it was written for Goldman's fellow Jews--for the members of his synagogue, for his family, his children, and even for Rabbi Siegel--to deliver the author's conclusion: "To my mind, Judaism is diminished if it is painted too narrowly...

...Caught as a child between battling parents, he learned to cling to his faith as an oasis of stability...

...from this study we are able to look at our own religion with new eyes, and emerge, not with some form of religious esperanto, but with renewed faith and deepened conviction...

...The atmosphere of the school was not what he expected...

...Instead, what leaves a far greater impression on the author is his immersion into the orchard of religious pluralism, especially through a course taught by Professor Diana Eck...

...Goldman was raised in the relatively insulated and conservative world of Orthodox Judaism...

...As for the divinity school, Goldman's account is largely tied to the classes he took, the more or less sympathetic professors and students he encountered, and the evident pleasure he experienced in the almost delicious indolence of student life...

...But Eck astounds him in the opening class with a sentence that comes to serve as motto for the book: "If you know one religion, you don't know any...

...Such seemingly casuistical questions as whether it is a violation of the Sabbath to take notes with a pencil become symbolic trials by ordeal in the strenuous effort to remain faithful in the secular world...

...Yet emerge he must, with some regret, his year at the divinity school over, to retum to a real job in the real world...

...That, in the end, was Goldman's own experience...

...The author's back-to-school enthusiasm and relish of the experience prevent him from pursuing the tough journalist's questions he would normally bring to an assignment...

...On one level Goldman offers an engaging portrait of life at an Ivy League seminary...

...indeed, he even finds himself fantasizing about becoming a rabbi...

...So strong was the respect for pluralism that Goldman found it difficult to get a sense of what Christians actually believe...

...Ultimately, The Search for God at Harvard does not pretend to offer a report on the state of seminary education, the future of religion in America, or an introduction to world religions...

...Tile book shifts--at times wobbles-between several purposes...

...But alongside his love of Judaism there arose another passion, for journalism, fostered during long subway rides to the yeshiva, as he pored over discarded newspapers...

...He is certainly not tempted to convert...

...He does not expire or go mad in the orchard...

...That he begins his account of that year on such a portentous note immediately suggests that this is not to be a simple journalistic account of life at the divinity school...

...Robert Ellsberg ri Goldman begins his book with a Talmudic parable: "Four went down to the orchard...

...Goldman, a religion writer for the New York Times and---of the utmost importance to his story---an Orthodox Jew, received the support of his newspaper to undertake a year's study at the prestigious Harvard Divinity School...

...And the challenge that Goldman confronts is not whether one may emerge from the orchard with faith intact---conversion in his case presents no serious temptation--but whether there is not the potential for a greater wholeness, a richness to be found in the encounter with other faiths...

...He is pursued all the way to Harvard by the shade of Rabbi Siegel, the external superego of his youth, who tugs at his sleeve and taunts him with warnings about the temptations abounding in the gentile world...

...Eck's point is that the study of other religions does more than provide insight into the faith of others...

...In a modest way, Goldman invests his struggle with a kind of nobility...