Every form of Judaism that exists today descends from the response to this catastrophe, and the response was a substitution carried out with remarkable deliberateness. Prayer took the place of sacrifice, and the daily services were arranged to correspond to the offerings that had been made. The study of the laws of sacrifice continued as a religious act in itself, on the principle that one who studies the offerings is credited as having brought them. The household table took on the sanctity of the altar, with washing, bread and blessing.
The groups that could not make the transition disappeared. The Sadducees, whose position was bound to the temple and its priesthood, are not heard of afterwards. The Essene settlement at the Dead Sea ended in the same war. The rabbinic movement, heir to the Pharisees, survived because its religion was already portable: it was built around interpretation of Torah, a practice that requires a text and a teacher and nothing else.
The mourning was institutionalised rather than resolved. Tisha B'Av, the ninth of Av, fasts for both destructions on one day, with Lamentations read in a darkened synagogue and the ordinary comforts suspended. A glass is broken at weddings. A patch of a house is customarily left unfinished. A religion that had lost its centre built the loss into its calendar and its architecture rather than moving past it.