Q&A: Showering During the Nine Days
Showering During the Nine Days
Question
What is the Rabbi’s view regarding the practical Jewish law nowadays about showering during the Nine Days? Hot water? Lukewarm or cold? Is any pleasurable aspect of showering forbidden (aside from the need to get clean), or is only a bathhouse/sauna forbidden?
From the words of the halakhic decisors, it seems that hygiene in their day was very poor. They all mention that “if one is accustomed to bathe every Sabbath eve, then it is also permitted for him on the Sabbath eve of Shabbat Chazon”….. Perhaps nowadays the whole matter of showering is essentially different, and there is no need to make an effort to deviate from the regular routine?
Thank you very much!!!
Answer
Whatever is needed for cleanliness. Washing was forbidden only for pleasure. Because there is a gray area, people are careful to make some kind of change, but there is not really any inherent need for a change here. Clearly, nowadays we are more delicate, and washing is more important to us than in the past, and that is perfectly fine. Jewish law has recognized a delicate person from time immemorial.
Still, one could discuss this from the law of one who immerses in a hot spring, which is forbidden if he is prohibited from deriving benefit from it (Rosh Hashanah 28a), but it seems to me that this is not relevant here. We are not dealing with an object from which benefit is forbidden, but with a prohibited act. And by logic it seems to me that if there is no other spring, it would be permitted to immerse in it (it is unavoidable and not intended).
Discussion on Answer
It is accepted that with laundry, the act itself is also forbidden, since they forbade washing even for the sake of the days afterward. But there is common sense, and if you don’t have a normal garment to wear, then wash something and wear it. As with children’s clothes.
I know someone whose custom is to wash every Sabbath eve
on the Sabbath when one blesses
the month of Adar
II.
So presumably he won’t wash during the Nine Days…
Does this also apply to laundry and wearing clean clothes?