anything to the more educated Jews. In 1858, Löw published a cynical critique of the German rabbi, stating he was far inferior to Frankel in scholarship and merely an apologetic. In 1859, the tensions between the Positive-Historical and Orthodox in regards to the former's use of critical-scientific approach to the sacred texts exploded. Frankel published his Darkei ha-Mishna ("Ways of the Mishna"), writing – based on several specific examples by traditional sources, like Asher ben Jehiel – that when the Sages cited rulings of unknown origin described as Law given to Moses at Sinai, they meant merely ancient customs accepted as such. Enraged by this subversion of Orthodox dogma, Samson Raphael Hirsch denounced him as a heretic. Löw, Hildesheimer and their supporters participated in the public debate; the former recalled that "Hirsch was branded an Inquisitor, Frankel an apostate." In the 1863–64 Kompert Affair – another event that distinguished sharply between the two schools – that erupted after Heinrich Graetz wrote a treatise that contrasted the traditional concept of a personal Messiah, Löw and other Hungarian rabbis of his camp rallied behind the historian and attacked Hildesheimer, who organized a mass petition against Graetz. The most contentious and practical issue in the religious strife was the Neolog demand, voiced from the early 1850s, to establish a modern Rabbinical Seminary as the only institute that could train certified rabbis. Orthodox reaction The death of Moses Sofer in 1839 left his followers without a leader. This vacuum allowed the quick rise to prominence of Hildesheimer in the 1850s. The traditional Hungarian rabbis did not share his zeal for secular studies and modernization, albeit in conservative spirit, but he seemed to have the sole answer for the threat posed by the progressives. The Oberlander Jews of northwestern Hungary – modern Burgenland and Slovakia west of the Tatra Mountains, descended of immigrants from Moravia and Austria – were mostly Orthodox, though thoroughly modernized. Many embraced Hildesheimer's views. The Unterlander Jews of the northeast – modern eastern Slovakia, Zakarpattia Oblast and Northern Transylvania – came from Galicia. They resided in the country's most backward regions, barely influenced by the government's modernization efforts, and almost all clung to the old ways. The authorities ordered the creation of Jewish public schools within the communities in 1850: in 1858, while there was a school for every 650 Jews in Oberland, the ratio in Unterland was 1:14,200. The latter