GEN1538 The moral precepts of Judaism demand that we be compassionate to every soul.   Singled out repeatedly as especially needing our compassion are the poor, widows, orphans, and others in need.   The Torah repeatedly hammers away at our obligation to help those who are vulnerable and needy.   The tradition is so insistent that we be living vessels of compassion that the Talmud Beitzah 32b asserts that “anyone who is not compassionate with people is certainly not a descendant of our forefather Abraham.” … Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, for example, notes the connection between the words rachamim [compassion] and rechem [womb] The Penateuch, this verse and draws the conclusion that we should have compassion in our hearts just as a mother has a loving, emotional bond to the child of her womb.  He writes: “Compassion is the feeling of empathy which the pain of one being of itself awakens in another; and the higher and more human the beings are, the more keenly attuned are they to re-echo the note of suffering which, like a voice from heaven, penetrates the heart.   Horeb 17:125  MORINIS 75-6