[Avodah] bathing during the 9 days

[Zev Sero]

rabbirichwolpoe at gmail.com wrote:

> Minhag X may have triggered minhag Y 
> But just because Minhag X has been subsequently been abandoned proves
> NOTHING one way or the other about Minhag Y NOW!
> 
> Take this to its logical extreme and you could unravel most minhaggim!
> 
> Extreme Example:
> Given that bigamy was an issue for R Gershom's era due to people still
> fulfilling yibbum it was banned.
> 
> But since we subsequently abandoned yibbum in favor of halitza - therefore
> other bigamy is now OK!

Waitaminnit, where did you get the idea that ChDrG was motivated by a
problem related to chalitzah?   If it had been, then ein hochi nami.

In any case, what RMS is saying here is that the minhag of the 9 days
is not just derived from shloshim but is in fact to be noheg din
shloshim.  Whatever we don't do in shloshim, he says, we also don't
do in the 9 days.  It used to be the minhag not to bathe in shloshim,
and therefore it was also the minhag not to bathe in the 9 days; since
(he says) we now do bathe in shloshim, therefore there's no reason to
avoid it in the 9 days.




-- 
Zev Sero                      The trouble with socialism is that you
zev at sero.name                 eventually run out of other people’s money
                                                     - Margaret Thatcher