His whole life, Julio Mendes has sold goat, lamb and sheep skins in Belmonte -- a village four hours’ drive from Lisbon, in the foothills of northeastern Portugal. Until recently, anyone might have said Julio was just another Belmonte villager brushing the wool off his shirt at the end of each workday. But in 1988, Julio came out of hiding with approximately 80 other Belmonte residents and formally returned to Judaism, undergoing conversion. They had grown up as Marranos – a derogatory term meaning “pigs,” used to refer to Portugal’s Jews who adopted the appearance of Christianity and secretly maintained Jewish rituals during centuries of Inquisition. Now they were ready to be known as Jews again.