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While the nation winds down for a traditional Christmas holiday across slow-moving days of coast and scorching heat accompanied by the background of sporting matches and insect sounds, this year the country’s summer atmosphere feels, unfortunately, like none before.

It would be a significant oversimplification to describe the national disposition after the anti-Jewish violent assault on Australian Jews during the beachside Hanukah celebrations as one of mere ennui.

Across the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of the nation's urban centers – a tone of immediate surprise, grief and terror is segueing to fury and deep polarization.

Those who had previously missed the often voiced concerns of Australian Jews are now acutely aware. Similarly, they are attuned to balancing the need for a far more urgent, vigorous government and institutional crackdown against antisemitism with the freedom to demonstrate against genocide.

If ever there was a moment for a countrywide dialogue, it is now, when our faith in humanity is so deeply depleted. This is especially so for those of us lucky never to have experienced the hatred and dread of religious and ethnic persecution on this continent or anywhere else.

And yet the algorithms keep spewing at us the trite hot takes of those with inflammatory, polarizing stances but little understanding at all of that terrifying fragility.

This is a period when I regret not having a greater faith. I lament, because believing in people – in mankind’s potential for kindness – has failed us so painfully. Something else, something higher, is required.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have witnessed such profound examples of human decency. The heroism of individuals. The selflessness of bystanders. Emergency personnel – law enforcement and paramedics, those who charged into the gunfire to help others, some recognised but for the most part unnamed and unsung.

When the police tape still waved in the wind all about Bondi, the necessity of social, religious and cultural solidarity was admirably promoted by faith leaders. It was a message of love and tolerance – of bringing together rather than splitting apart in a moment of targeted violence.

Consistent with the symbolism of Hanukah (illumination amid gloom), there was so much appropriate reference of the need for hope.

Unity, hope and compassion 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, blame and accusation.

Some elected officials moved straight for the darkness, using the atrocity as a cynical chance to question Australia’s migration rules.

Observe the harmful rhetoric of division from veteran fomenters of Australian racial division, exploiting the massacre before the site was even cold. Then read the statements of political figures while the probe was still active.

Politics has a formidable job 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 uncertainties.

Like why, when the official terror alert was assessed as probable, did such a large open-air Hanukah event go ahead with such a woefully inadequate security presence? Like how could the accused attackers have six guns in the residence when the security agency has so publicly and repeatedly alerted of the threat of targeted attacks?

How rapidly we were subjected to that cliched line (or versions of it) that it’s people not guns that kill. Naturally, each point are true. It’s feasible to at the same time seek new ways to stop hate-fuelled violence and prevent guns away from its potential perpetrators.

In this city of profound beauty, of pristine azure skies above sea and sand, the water and the coastline – 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 horrific violence.

We yearn right now for understanding and meaning, for loved ones, and perhaps for the solace of beauty in culture or nature.

This weekend many Australians are calling off holiday gathering plans. Quiet contemplation will seem more appropriate.

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

The reassurance of community – the binding force of the unity in the very word – is what we likely need most.

But sadly, all of the indicators are that unity in public life and society will be hard to find this extended, enervating summer.