When the communal leaders resolved to appoint him as their rabbi, Meltzer wrote to his teacher Soloveitchik and to Rabbi Yechiel Michel Epstein, author of the Arukh HaShulkhan, asking them to send him the necessary affirmation. Epstein immediately mailed him a letter of semicha, while Soloveitchik made do with a brief telegram that simply bore the words, "Yoreh yoreh, yodin yodin".
