My cousin Zev Eleff has a very good piece up at Jewish Action. One line, though, struck my eye: After describing Abraham Karp's research for his famous article about New York's attempt to have a chief rabbi, Zev writes that the papers Karp used subsequently disappeared.

This fed into a silly idea I once had: It seemed to me that every single mention of the chief rabbi debacle in any scholarly article referenced Karp's piece, and only Karp's piece. It led to my wondering whether it was possible that Karp made the whole thing up. Impossible, I know: There has to be other evidence out there. I know, on a logical basis, that I have to be wrong and, as I said, the idea is silly. But that almost throwaway comment in the Eleff article doesn't make it any easier to concede to the logic. :-)