Rav Label was a fountain of real-world eitzos tovos and sagacious counsel, while being firmly rooted in solid, authentic Torah hashkafah and halachah in all its aspects
Under the leafy trees of Camp Ohr Shraga, Reb Label would speak, eager young bochurim learning halachah in a serious way for the first time. Because even as he became a busy rav and posek, Reb Label never gave up the mission that he’d started as a bochur.
In the dining room of Yeshiva Torah Vodaath, the teenage Label Katz would share divrei halachah with friends at the table; the clarity and “geshmak” of his short presentations drew listeners from other tables and it became a formal shiur. So even decades later, after his sefer, Ohel Aryeh, became a classic for chassanim, even after he was appointed rav of Zichron Yosef in Boro Park and his phone seemed to never stop ringing with sh’eilos, his shiurim bore the mark of those early days — the enthusiasm of a young bochur, which lives on in his seforim and recorded shiurim.
He surely would have recoiled from hearing the term “tzaddik nistar” being applied to himself, but Rav Label Katz, a Yid who fled all traces of kavod, was not only a Torah giant and master posek, but had limitless ahavas Yisrael. It was hard to reach him on the telephone, since he was constantly paskening sh’eilos for the widest circle of Yidden, always with consummate patience, taking every sh’eilah seriously, and, with total mastery of Shulchan Aruch and poskim, tailoring his psak to the nature of the shoel and “where he was coming from.” As is said of first-class poskim, he had “breite pleitzos” (broad shoulders), meaning that he was fearless and sure enough of the rectitude of his psak to recognize where there was room for leniency and where there wasn’t. Every shoel left the discussion confident and assured of the right thing to do.
His passing just after Pesach was a shock and heartbreak for his thousands of talmidim and followers. I had the zechus to be one of them, although I never really gave him the appreciation he was due. Perhaps these few lines of love and respect will in some small way serve as compensation.
In his shiurim, Rav Katz often mentioned matters he discussed with renowned poskim, such as the Debrecener Rav ztz”l and kabbalos and maasei tzaddikim he treasured from Rav Yaakov Kamenetsky ztz”l and others. His volumes of Sh’eilos uTeshuvos Ohel Aryeh are his legacy in the realm of practical halachah.
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