Galil Takhton, "Lower Province") were the Jews who resided in the northeastern regions of the historical Kingdom of Hungary, or present-day eastern Slovakia, Zakarpattia Oblast in Ukraine, and northwestern Transylvania, in Romania.
[2] Unterland, or "Lowland", was named so by the Oberlander, in spite of being topographically higher: It served to reflect the scorn of the educated westerners to their poor and unacculturated brethren.
However, the vast emigration from adjacent Galicia, following its annexation by Empress Maria Theresa in 1772, shaped the character of the Unterlander, in addition to the area's backwardness.
[5] The boundary which separated Unterland from the rest of Hungarian Jewry ran between the Tatra Mountains and Kolozsvár (present-day Cluj-Napoca).
While there were tensions between the Hasidim and the Ashkenazim, they never reached the levels of hostility which characterized the Lithuanian Misnagdim, both due to the movement's local nature and the lack of opposition from Hungary's most important rabbi, Moses Sofer.