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As Australia winds down for a customary Christmas holiday during languorous days of beach and scorching heat set to the background of sporting matches and insect sounds, this year the country’s summer mood feels, sadly, like none before.

It would be a significant oversimplification to describe the collective temperament after the antisemitic violent assault on Jewish Australians during Bondi Hanukah celebrations as one of simple discontent.

Across the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of the nation's urban centers – a tone of immediate shock, sorrow and terror is segueing to anger and bitter division.

Those who had previously missed the often voiced fears of the Jewish community are now highly attuned. Similarly, they are attuned to balancing the need for a much more immediate, energetic government and institutional crackdown against antisemitism with the right to demonstrate against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a moment for a countrywide dialogue, it is now, when our faith in humanity is so sorely depleted. This is particularly so for those of us fortunate enough never to have endured the animosity and fear of religious and ethnic targeting on this continent or anywhere else.

And yet the algorithms keep spewing at us the banal hot takes of those with inflammatory, divisive views but no sense at all of that terrifying fragility.

This is a time when I lament not having a greater faith. I lament, because believing in humanity – in our capacity for compassion – has failed us so acutely. A different source, a greater power, is required.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have seen such profound instances of human goodness. The heroism of individuals. The bravery of those present. First responders – law enforcement and paramedics, those who ran towards the danger to help others, some publicly hailed but for the most part unnamed and unheralded.

When the police tape still fluttered wildly all about Bondi, the imperative of social, religious and ethnic solidarity was laudably promoted by faith leaders. It was a call of compassion and tolerance – of bringing together rather than dividing in a time of targeted violence.

Consistent with the symbolism of the Festival of Lights (light amid gloom), there was so much fitting reference of the need for lightness.

Togetherness, light and love was the essence of faith.

‘Our shared community spaces may not appear quite the same again.’

And yet elements of the Australian polity reacted so disgustingly swiftly with fragmentation, blame and accusation.

Some politicians gravitated straight for the pessimism, using the atrocity as a cynical opportunity to question Australia’s migration rules.

Observe the dangerous message of division from veteran agitators of societal discord, capitalizing on the massacre before the crime scene was even cold. Then read the words of political figures while the investigation was ongoing.

Politics has a formidable task to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is mourning and frightened and seeking the light and, not least, explanations to so many questions.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was assessed as probable, did such a significant open-air Hanukah event go ahead with such a grossly insufficient security presence? Like how could the accused attackers have multiple firearms in the family home when the security agency has so openly and repeatedly warned of the threat of targeted attacks?

How quickly we were treated to that tired argument (or versions of it) that it’s individuals not weapons that kill. Naturally, both things are valid. It’s possible to simultaneously seek new ways to stop hate-fuelled violence and keep guns away from its potential actors.

In this city of profound splendor, of pristine blue heavens above ocean and sand, the ocean and the beaches – our communal areas – may not seem entirely familiar again to the many who’ve observed that iconic Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s obscene violence.

We yearn right now for comprehension and meaning, for family, and perhaps for the solace of aesthetics in art or nature.

This weekend many Australians are cancelling Christmas party plans. Reflective solitude will seem more in order.

But this is perhaps counterintuitively counterintuitive. For in these times of fear, anger, melancholy, bewilderment and loss we need each other more than ever.

The comfort of community – the human glue of the unity in the very word – is what we probably need most.

But tragically, all of the portents are that unity in public life and society will be elusive this long, enervating summer.