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While Australia winds down for a customary Christmas holiday during languorous days of coast and scorching heat set to the soundtrack of Test cricket and cicada song, this year the country’s summer mood seems, sadly, like no other.

It would be a significant oversimplification to describe the national disposition after the antisemitic violent assault on Australian Jews during Bondi Hanukah festivities as one of simple ennui.

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 fury and bitter division.

Those who had previously missed the frequently expressed fears of Australian Jews are now highly attuned. Just as, they are attuned to balancing the need for a much more immediate, vigorous government and institutional crackdown against antisemitism with the right to peacefully protest against genocide.

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

And yet the algorithms keep spewing at us the banal instant opinions of those with inflammatory, polarizing views but no sense at all of that profound vulnerability.

This is a time when I regret not having a stronger spiritual belief. I mourn, because having faith in people – in mankind’s capacity for kindness – has let us down so painfully. Something else, a greater power, is needed.

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

When the barrier cordon still fluttered wildly all about Bondi, the necessity of community, faith-based and ethnic unity was admirably championed by faith leaders. It was a message of love and tolerance – of unifying rather than dividing in a moment of targeted violence.

In keeping with the meaning of Hanukah (light amid darkness), there was so much fitting reference of the need for hope.

Unity, hope and love was the message of faith.

‘Our shared community spaces may not appear exactly as they did again.’

And yet elements of the political landscape responded so disgustingly quickly with division, finger-pointing and accusation.

Some politicians moved straight for the pessimism, using the atrocity as a cynical opportunity to challenge Australia’s immigration policies.

Observe the dangerous message of division from longstanding fomenters of Australian racial division, exploiting the attack before the crime scene was even cold. Then consider the statements of leadership aspirants while the probe was still active.

Politics has a daunting job to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is mourning and scared and looking for the hope and, importantly, explanations to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the official terror alert was assessed as likely, did such a significant public Hanukah event go ahead with such a woefully inadequate protection? Like how could the accused attackers have multiple firearms in the family home when the domestic intelligence organisation has so openly and consistently warned of the danger of antisemitic violence?

How quickly we were subjected to that tired argument (or iterations of it) that it’s people not guns that cause death. Of course, both things are true. It’s feasible to simultaneously seek new ways to stop violent bigotry and prevent guns away from its potential actors.

In this metropolis of profound beauty, of clear blue heavens above sea and shore, the water and the coastline – our communal areas – may not seem entirely familiar again to the multitude who’ve noted that famous Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s horrific bloodshed.

We long right now for comprehension and meaning, for family, and perhaps for the consolation of aesthetics in culture or the natural world.

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

But this is perhaps counterintuitively counterintuitive. For in these days of anxiety, outrage, melancholy, confusion and loss we need each other more than ever.

The reassurance of togetherness – the human glue of the unity in the very word – is what we likely need most.

But tragically, all of the portents are that unity in public life and the community will be hard to find this extended, draining summer.