February 28, 1986

America's Jewish religious groups are locked in an impassioned argument over fundamental questions of Jewish identity, with some leaders warning that the dispute could result in deep and enduring divisions in the Jewish community. The tensions, which some compare to the friction between fundamentalists and liberals in Christianity, stem from a growing dispute among Orthodox, Conservative and Reform Jews over the validity of each group's standards for marriage, divorce and conversion. The standards are basic to a person's identity as a Jew. ''The extremism that manifests itself on both sides threatens to isolate Jew from Jew and to rend the fabric of Jewish peoplehood so that we will no longer be one people,'' Rabbi Haskel Lookstein declared in his inaugural address in December as president of the New York Board of Rabbis. Uncommon Bitterness The dispute, which intensified after a 1983 Reform decision to change the standards for Jewish identity, has become a persistent topic for synagogue and institutional debates, with one recent forum at the 92d Street Y bearing the title ''The Internal War of the Jews.'' It is difficult to pick up a copy of a Jewish newspaper or intellectual periodical these days without seeing one or more articles and letters about the strife.

In what prosecutors described as a major new investigation, a Federal grand jury is examining reports of corruption in the Board of Education's $350 million-a-year school construction, repair and maintenance program, law-enforcement and city officials said yesterday. The grand jury, under the direction of United States Attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani of Manhattan, has subpoenaed records and as many as 10 employees of the board's Division of School Buildings, the officials said. ''The United States Attorney and the Federal Bureau of Investigation are investigating allegations concerning the Board of Education,'' Mary T. Shannon, an assistant United States attorney, said yesterday. She would not specify what aspects of board business were being examined.

The chairman of the Presidential commission investigating the space shuttle explosion charged today that the space agency had abandoned ''good judgment and common sense'' in handling critical safety issues. The chairman, William P. Rogers, made the exasperated comment near the end of a third consecutive day of testimony indicating that warnings on shuttle safety were not fully understood or acted upon. There has also been testimony that the warnings were not brought to the attention of the officials who decided to launch the Challenger on Jan. 28, when it exploded shortly after liftoff, killing the seven astronauts aboard. Today's session marked the close of public hearings on the decision-making process before the launching.

The Government of President Corazon C. Aquino Thursday released 34 prisoners who had been detained on political charges by the Marcos Government. Among them were five prominent civil rights lawyers and a poet. According to Government and human rights spokesmen, the detainees were the first of at least 400 whose cases are being reviewed. Detention centers around the country are thought to hold between 500 and 700 such prisoners.

The discovery that vital information apparently never got to top officials during the ill-fated launching of the space shuttle Challenger is a failure of a sort not unknown in business circles. Fears that cold weather could cause problems for the solid-fuel rocket boosters apparently never reached top officials who made the final ''go'' decision, although the Morton Thiokol engineers familiar with the boosters were not afraid to suggest the shuttle should be delayed. Indeed, the engineers argued their point heatedly. But managers at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration who heard those concerns apparently did not relay them to NASA's top officials. In fact, chief executives everywhere face a constant struggle to get bad news in front of them before it becomes a matter of crisis proportions.