To reinforce his opposition to secular studies and the use of a vernacular, Akiva turned outside of Jewish law, and based his rulings on the non-legalistic Aggadah. The ultra-Orthodox believed the main threat did not come from liberal Jews Neologs, who advocated religious reform, but from the moderate traditionalists; they directed their attacks chiefly against the modern Orthodox Azriel Hildesheimer. Their power base lay among the Unterlander Jews of northeastern Hungary — roughly present-day eastern Slovakia, Zakarpattia Oblast, and Northern Transylvania — where modernity made little headway, and the local Galician-descended Jews were poor, unacculturated, and strongly influenced by Hasidism. Sighet, as well as most other Hungarian Hasidic dynasties, originated from these regions.