Wheat has a special status in the Jewish tradition. As the staff of life, it is the most important food. A person could live on bread and water for an extended period of time. The thanksgiving prayer recited after partaking of a meal where bread is served is a special, elaborate blessing distinct from others.

The Talmud teaches that wheat was actually a tree in the Garden of Eden, with tasty cakes growing straight from its bough. When Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge, reality shattered and transformed completely. Wheat, which was the loftiest tree in Eden, became one of the lowliest plants in our fallen world. That which was highest fell lowest. It now takes enormous effort, and many sequential labors, to turn wheat from tough kernels into edible loaves, pale imitations of those that grew straight from the vine in Eden .

A child first acquires the awareness that enables speech when it begins to ingest wheat. Kabballa explains that this is because the numerical value of the Hebrew word for wheat (chitah) is 22, the number of letters in the Hebrew alphabet. This Kabbalistic fact connects wheat to the sefira of Insight for it is there that the capacity for conscious awareness first appears. Not only do letters enable speech, they are also required for thought. These rarified letters that glimmer in the mind as the source of our creative insights are the spiritual root of wheat.