I had sent SZL an email describing my new algorithm for authorship verification, which I had used to prove that Ben Ish Chai wrote Resp. Torah Lishmah (which he claims to have found in an archive). The bizarre part is that BIH brings Torah Lishmah as a tanna di-mesaya for his own views in Resp. Rav Pe'alim. Anyway, SZL got back to me and pointed me to a very fine article in Shevet mi-Yehudah by Yehudah Lavie Ben-David which reaches the same conclusion (that BIH wrote Torah Lishmah himself) without any algorithms. Ben-David figured it out the old-fashioned way: by reading the teshuvos. Anyway, SZL joins the list of those suggesting I tackle Besamim Rosh, a notorious forgery attributed to the Rosh. Rav Ovadiah is still quite ambivalent on the topic of whether the Rosh may have had a hand in these teshuvos. If I get an electronic version (either by scanning or getting some hearty soul to type it in), I'll run it.

In unrelated news, YK's legwork finally paid off: the vaadat chukah held a special meeting, heavily covered by the press, to savage Edna Arbel's lamentable candidacy for the Supreme Court. It'll probably help vi a toiten, baynkes but the point was made that the Knesset is getting tired of these decisions being made in smoke-filled rooms.