The Pein-Short spat has taken an interesting philological turn with Pein
taking Short to task for his spelling of the Hebrew/Yiddish word "חוצפה" or "חֻצְפָּה". Pein writes "Chutzpah" and Short "hutzpah". For completenes sake I should add that I've also seen it written "chutzpa" by Sabras (native born Israelis). Of course any writing of this word using the Latin alphabet is obviously a transliteration and so the exact spelling is open to argument.
Old fashioned paper dictionaries aren't much help. My Meriam-Webster and Chambers 20th Century both have "chutzpah" but there is no mention of the word in my Shorter OED in any of its incarnations. This might suggest that Americans are more qualified than Brits to discus the etymology.
Perhaps the best authority nowadays is the
Google Books NGram Viewer. This shows that "chutzpah" has been on the rise since the late 1950's and today dominates "chutzpa" and "hutzpah" by a ratio of roughly 100:5:1. For completeness sake I should note that "hutzpa" also exists although it is
much less common than "hutzpah".
Ah, but I was so much older then. I'm younger than that now.