Welcome!
I’m a young FFB, but both my parents are BT’s, and became so when I was a little girl. So although I didn’t really have a choice, I remember eating treif, going to parties, celebrating non jewish holidays, and more. All of my extended family is not religous, and although we don’t talk much (my parents talk to them more) questions like this do come up, and I try my best to explain.
The Torah is the blueprint of the world. We don’t need to look into secular history to learn from, look in the Torah and you’ll find plenty of rape, betrayal, etc. There’s plenty of books and commentaries on that, in Israel through out high school all of the history classes were about rabanim, the holocaust, and not just history itself but the flame and the ideas, what it was like to live in Europe during WW2 and the secular influences. Split up and makes cases against and for keeping torah at the time. We learned in depth about the different idealistic movements throughout history, communism, industrial, when literature became big, and science became big, etc.
So for history, were good.
Okay, so does everything have to connect to Torah? YES! The Torah was written 2000 years before Hashem even created the world! And the aleph beis was created anther 2000 years before that! The Torah has everything we could ever need, and is the basis of life itself. Everything even in the secular world, has roots in the Torah, science has proven things written in the Torah time and time again.
Does relaxing serve a prpose? Yes it does, we need to unwind to be able to be productive human beings.
So what’s wrong with secular books?
Well, first of all there’s a lot of kefirah in secular books. i DON’T know the halachos about kefirah, but I remember in seminary a teacher had told us her husband forced her to burn a secular novel after she told him that there’s a scene where scientists come up with another explanation for what seemed to be the remains of noah’s ark, and how the story couldn’t be real.
So I know many books have kefirah, and unless you know the halachos really well and are on the constant look out, science and politcal books can be dangerous. If you do want to read such books I suggest to consult a rabbi, leanr the halachos etc. The reson why the thread was deleted is because for the average FFB, these are of no interest and they don’t really add anything to our lives, like I said before, if you are looking to learn from things there’s PLENTY in our own history, and there’s frum science books if you know where to get them. (At ;least IN HEBREW I know…)
About novels, even the ones that are “clean” and have no language at all, the undercurrents and values in the book can be against our own. Sneaking around, lying, stealing, and more are prevalent in these novels. Everything you read and see DOES affect you, you are less sensitive to these things. When I stopped reading and watching for the most part, every time I watch something I can pause the video and say “hey that’s stealing” “hey that’s lying” even in KIDS movies, I’m talking about Disney movies my sister begs me to watch with her, whose intended audience is 5-10 year olds.
Now, I don’t blame you for wanting to read those things, they are more interesting often times, and you do you. As a BT, I don’t think you need to give them up just yet, but that’s the ideal place…..
Do you understand?