What was going on when I was born?

In response to growing Congressional pressure for programs to create jobs, President Reagan has ordered a study of whether to speed up Government construction projects to make jobs available sooner than scheduled. ''The President, after hearing the criticisms from the Hill about no immediate effect of a jobs program, authorized the staff to look into this,'' Larry M. Speakes, the White House spokesman, said today. He emphasized that Mr. Reagan had not yet approved the idea of a Federal construction speedup and that if he did, it would involve no additional budget expenditures. Even so, the White House comments clearly were offered in response to the growing demands in Congress for some early emergency measures to deal with persistently high unemployment, which was 10.8 percent in December.

International Americans and Israelis agreed to build a formal boundary to separate their military forces in an effort to avert confrontations. The accord came after a series of incidents in which Israeli forces tried to patrol in and around the zone controlled by the 1,300-man Marine Corps contingent of the international peacekeeping force in Lebanon. (Page A1, Column 1.) Salvadoran troops reoccupied the smoldering town of Berlin after 500 guerrillas who seized it on Monday withdrew, according to the Government commander. He said that fighting erupted as some of his 1,000 troops pursued the retreating rebels, and reported that 3 of his soldiers were killed and 13 wounded. He put the guerrilla casualties at 50. (A1:2-3.)

A porter at an Upper West Side residential hotel shot four people to death there yesterday morning, beginning with his wife, a young man and a girl in his apartment and ending five hours later with the hotel's owner, the police said. After the final burst of gunfire, in which the owner's wife was also wounded, the porter wandered around for a few minutes outside the the hotel, at 77th Street and Broadway. He then returned to the lobby, where he waited calmly until officers arrived and arrested him, the police said.

Ten Fire Department inspectors and 12 plumbing contractors were arrested yesterday on bribery charges and accused of overlooking possible safety violations at more than 50 apartment buildings in Manhattan. Law-enforcement officials said that most of the evidence against the suspects had been obtained in the last two years by two men who posed as a corrupt inspector and a corrupt contractor. The bribes ranged from $15 to $100 for each inspection, an indictment said. It added that the payoffs had been made since 1976.

Warren M. Anderson, the leader of the Republican majority in the State Senate, said yesterday that the state budget proposed Monday by Governor Cuomo benefited New York City at the expense of the rest of the state. ''If this is sharing the pain, it hurts on a selective basis, at best,'' said Senator Anderson, who is from Binghamton. ''After an early reading of this proposed Cuomo budget, I believe that perhaps a more equitable approach can be developed.'' Mr. Anderson, a key figure in Albany, made his statements in a memorandum ''to editors and publishers.'' The memo was mailed to newspapers in upstate New York and on Long Island but not in New York City, according to the Senator's spokesman, Charles Dumas.

American and Israeli diplomats agreed today to build a formal boundary to separate their military forces in an effort to avert further confrontations between them. The accord came after a series of incidents over the last six weeks in which Israeli troops have tried to patrol in and around the zone controlled by the 1,300-man Marine Corps contingent of the international peacekeeping force. The latest of these incidents occurred Wednesday when Capt. Charles B. Johnson, commander of Company L, Third Battalion, Eighth Marine Regiment, felt compelled to draw his pistol, hop onto an Israeli tank and grab its commander to prevent the vehicle from entering an area that the Marines believed was under their sole operational control. An Overnight Folk Hero Captain Johnson has become an overnight folk hero in Lebanon, where all of the Arabic radio stations have been broadcasting the story of the American marine who ''single-handedly'' held off three Israeli tanks with a pistol. An Israeli military spokesman in the Beirut suburb of Yarze, who declined to be identified, dismissed Captain Johnson's actions as reckless and ''totally unwarranted,'' adding that he was lucky the Israeli tank commander had not dealt harshly with him.

Two armed robbers broke into a home on a quiet street this morning, shot and seriously wounded a policeman who responded to a call from a tenant in the house, and then were killed in a fusillade of police gunfire after a five-mile chase. Both men were shot several times after the police forced their car into a tree in a residential neighborhood in nearby Lodi. The gunmen fired from the disabled car and the police returned fire with shotguns and handguns, according to Larry McClure, the Bergen County Prosecutor. During the exchange of fire, the vehicle's windshield was pierced by 12 bullets and all the remaining windows were shattered, spewing glass throughout the car and onto the Lodi street, Garibaldi Avenue.

Salvadoran troops walked into this smoldering city Wednesday evening after 500 guerrillas who seized it on Monday withdrew southward, the commander of the Government operation said here today. Fighting erupted, he said, as some of his 1,000 soldiers pursued the retreating guerrillas. He said 3 of his men were killed and 13 wounded, and put guerrilla casualties at 50. This southeastern city of 35,000 people in cotton-producing Usulutan Province was the largest to be taken by guerrilla forces so far.

Congress won a round in court today in its effort to press a contempt citation against Anne M. Gorsuch, the Environmental Protection Administrator. A Federal District judge dismissed a Justice Department lawsuit challenging the contempt citation, which was issued by the House of Representatives after Mrs. Gorsuch refused to turn over subpoenaed documents. Mrs. Gorsuch said she had declined to turn over the documents because the President had ordered her keep them confidential. In his decision, Judge John Lewis Smith Jr. urged both sides ''to settle their differences without further judicial involvement,'' saying that ''compromise and cooperation, rather than confrontation, should be the aim of the parties.'' The House had asked the United States Attorney to present the contempt case to a grand jury. Instead, the Justice Department filed a civil lawsuit to overturn the House action, and the United States Attorney said he would delay prosecution until after the civil case was decided.

Pan American World Airways yesterday reported a loss of $272.9 million in the fourth quarter, much greater than the $82.8 million loss a year earlier and somewhat worse than analysts had expected. Pan Am said the loss was widened by $118 million in special charges. Revenues for the quarter fell 7.2 percent, to $838.7 million, from $903.9 million. For the year, the carrier reported a loss of $485.3 million, far greater that the loss of $18.9 million in 1981. But the 1981 figure had been reduced by the effects of the sale of the Intercontinental Hotels Corporation. If the gains from that sale had been excluded, the loss for 1981 totaled $405.5 million.

Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz is a diminutive man with a frolicsome spirit and a mind that scans the wisdom of centuries. As a former mathematician who has been hailed as one of the great modern scholars of the Talmud, he walked the path of religious conversion that he now commends to Jews living in a secular age. The recent signs of ''spiritual awakening'' in America, he said this week in New York after a three-week lecture tour, ''is mostly a search for a good 5-cent religion - people are always looking for a shortcut.'' In contrast, he continued, a genuine spiritual quest involves time and hard work.

The Advertising column in Business Day Tuesday gave an incorrect address for Geers Gross Advertising. It is 220 East 42d Street.