Q. Our basement flooded from the rainstorm this week and we used old towels and shmates to dry it up. Can we machine wash and dry them before Tisha Beav so they don’t become moldy?

A. Old towels that are not used for drying oneself anymore but as cleaning rags or “shmattes”, can be machine washed and dried, preferably without detergent during the nine days.

Rabbi A. Bartfeld as advised by Horav Shlomo Miller Shlit”a