Borg continues, “Meals had a second significance within the Jewish homeland. For at least two groups, the Pharisees and the Essenes, meal practice had become a symbol of what God wanted Israel to be. Both practiced ‘closed commensality’ grounded in an understanding of God’s command in Leviticus 19:2: ‘You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.’ They understood holiness to be purity.”3 This helps us to understand the criticism continually brought against Yeshua for eating with tax collectors