How were the Jews affected by prayer?

Answer 1

Assuming you mean during the Holocaust, this is a question that many Jews - even those such as myself who were not even born during WW2 - are still asking ourselves and have yet to answer. What happened during the Holocaust, or as we know it the Shoah, when more than six million of us were murdered, is so horrible that even the greatest rabbis of modern times have been unable to provide an answer (and believe me, rabbis usually have a convincing answer for everything!)

Of course, though those in the death camps prayed, G-d did not save them.

Some Jews believe that G-d chose to ignore them due to some great crime that we have committed as a people, perhaps the constant failure evident in many of us to live according to the 613 commandments given to us in the Torah. Others, myself included, find it hard to accept that G-d would punish anybody of any religion so terribly and believe that since G-d has made all humans responsible for their own actions, He was unable to step in and prevent what was done because those who carried out the murders were responsible for what they did - and equally responsible for not doing so, had they have so chosen. Others - including my aunt who survived Auschwitz - found that they no longer had the ability to believe in G-d at all.