lesschumras,
You are beating around the bush, instead of documenting the flase allegations you leveled against klal yisroel.
Specifically you said:
1. “Our ancestors were ignorant peasants.”
2. “Our ancestors could barely read the Aleph Bais.”
3. “They stayed frum out of habit.”
4. that ONLY 1% of those ignorant peasant ancestors of ours were “talmedai chachamim”
5. “Once the civil restrictions were removed and Jews could live in the cities, the removal of the shtetl peer pressure meant that THE JEWS BY HABIT GAVE UP THEIR FRUMKEIT.”
You answered and documented none of these malicious and false allegations you leveled.
(The only two things you touched — and just barely — was that some poor uneducated Jews joined a movement and some Spanish Jews were forced to convert by the Inquisition.)
Your original statement was:
“Our ancestors in the middle Ages and in Eastern Europe were ( except for the 1%
of taslmedai chachamim ) were ignorant peasants living on shtetls who could barely read the Aleph Bais.”