Rabbi Michael Broyde's bizarre alter ego Herschel Goldwasser

TJC Update, 1:00 PM: Broyde has written a letter admitting to having created the character, and apologizing for it.]  A leading Orthodox rabbi and esteemed law professor appears to have created a fake professional identity which he used to gain access to members-only correspondence of a rival rabbinic group and tout his own work. The fake identity may also have been used to submit letters to scholarly journals.

Rabbi Michael Broyde is well-known in both the fields of Jewish scholarship and law, and according to veteran British Jewish news reporter Miriam Shaviv, he was also on the shortlist of candidates being considered for chief rabbi of England in recent months, in an article saying that the chancellor of Yeshiva University had called him “the finest mind of his generation.” He is a rabbinical court judge, or dayan, on the largest rabbinical court in the United States, the Beth Din of America. Broyde is also a law professor at the U.S. News & World Report 23rd-ranked law school in the country at Emory University, where he is also Senior Fellow at the Center for the Study of Law and Religion. His Emory biography declares that he “has published more than 75 articles and book chapters on various aspects of law and religion and Jewish law,” including in the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy and the Emory Law Journal. The author or editor of several books, he is a prominent figure in rabbinic circles, where his detailed arguments and strong opinions regarding matters of practice and communal standards have produced alliances and opposition. He was also the founding rabbi of the Young Israel of Toco Hills, in Atlanta, Georgia.

Rabbi Hershel Goldwasser has been published in multiple scholarly journals and been a part of numerous online dialogues with other Orthodox rabbis. But Goldwasser does not appear to be a real person. In examining voter registration records, contacting rabbis in areas where he was said to have lived, and in research by yeshiva archivists, no record of his existence has been found over the course of The Jewish Channel’s investigation. Yet the Goldwasser character’s name and e-mail address have been used to publish correspondence that frequently touts Broyde’s work. The Goldwasser character has generated correspondence over nearly 20 years. Going back to the early 1990s, the Goldwasser character has published letters in such well-regarded journals of Jewish thought as Tradition and Conservative Judaism.[...]