Whenever the subject of Jewish ritual murder (JRM) arises, one topic that always stands out, and that tends to favor the opinion that such murders have actually happened, is the phenomenon of converted Jews, often rabbis or hakhams, offering their testimony that JRMs have taken place and that they are aware of rare rabbinical texts that allow or encourage the practice, or that they have direct knowledge of it. There are many such instances that appear in the historical record; to name but a few, we have Theobald of Cambridge (Norwich, England, 1144, murder of William), Rabbi Samuel (Trent, 1475, murder of Simon Gerber), Samuel F. Brenz (Nuremberg, 1614), Jan Serafinowicz (Brest, 18th century) and Moses Abu-el-Afieh (Damascus, 1840, murder of Fr. Thomas and his servant).
Standing out among such rabbis is Neophyte, who converted at age 38 and wrote a book that was a combination of Orthodox Christian treatise and an account of what he knew about secret rabbinic practices from the experience of his own family. Basically, Neophyte states that the rite of ritual human sacrifice, as he understood it, was transmitted orally from a Jewish father to only one trusted son, one that the father had judged to be the most intelligent and capable of keeping the secret. That son then transmitted it in the same way to his son, and so on, the process continuing across the generations.
After conversion, Neophyte (a Greek word literally meaning “newly planted", “newly converted") was known more fully as Neofit Cavsocalvitiu, or Neophyte of Kafsokalyvia, referring to the Kafsokalyvia Skete, a monastic community on Mount Athos, Greece, of which Neophyte had become a member. His book was first published in Romanian as Confronting the Jews over Their Law and Customs with Proofs from the Holy and Divine Scripture of Both the Old and New Testaments, lasi, 1803. (Iasi was the capital of the principality of Moldavia.) He was eventually identified as Noé Weinjung, born about 1765 in Chisinau (Kishinev, then part of the principality of Moldavia), son of a Hasidic rabbi. He lived part of his life in the Cernica Monastery near Bucharest. These details come from Hellmut Schramm's Jewish Ritual Murder—A Historical Investigation, p. 354. According to Hervé Ryssen, History of Anti-Semitism, English translation by Carlos W. Porter, 2017, p. 409, Neophyte's book was published under the patronage of Metropolitan Iacob Stamati.
Further details may be had from the 1938 Romanian edition of the Neofit book. The Preface was written by the editor, Dr. Marin Popescu, and was reproduced in the 2002 edition as follows in English translation.
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