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While Australia winds down for a traditional Christmas holiday during slow-moving days of beach and scorching heat set to the soundtrack of sporting matches and cicada song, this year the country’s summer atmosphere feels, sadly, like no other.

It would be a significant understatement to characterize the national disposition after the antisemitic violent assault on Jewish Australians during the beachside Hanukah festivities as one of mere discontent.

Across the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of the nation's urban centers – a tenor of immediate surprise, grief and terror is segueing to fury and bitter polarization.

Those who had not picked up on the often voiced concerns of the Jewish community are now highly attuned. Just as, they are attuned to reconciling the need for a much more immediate, energetic government and institutional fight against antisemitism with the freedom to demonstrate against genocide.

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

And yet the social media feeds keep spewing at us the trite instant opinions of those with inflammatory, divisive stances but little understanding at all of that profound vulnerability.

This is a period when I lament not having a greater faith. I lament, because having faith in people – in mankind’s capacity for kindness – has failed us so painfully. A different source, something higher, is required.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have seen such profound instances of human goodness. The heroism of individuals. The selflessness of bystanders. Emergency personnel – police officers and paramedics, those who charged into the gunfire to help fellow humans, 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 community, faith-based and ethnic solidarity was admirably promoted by religious figures. 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 (light amid gloom), there was so much appropriate evocation of the need for hope.

Unity, hope and compassion was the message of faith.

‘Our public places may not look exactly as they did again.’

And yet elements of the political landscape responded so nauseatingly swiftly with division, finger-pointing and recrimination.

Some politicians gravitated straight for the darkness, using the atrocity as a calculating chance to question Australia’s immigration policies.

Observe the dangerous rhetoric of division from veteran agitators of societal discord, exploiting the attack before the site was even cold. Then read the statements of political figures while the investigation was ongoing.

Politics has a daunting 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 official terror alert was judged as likely, did such a large open-air Hanukah event go ahead with such a grossly inadequate security presence? Like how could the alleged killers have six guns in the residence when the domestic intelligence organisation has so publicly and repeatedly warned of the danger of antisemitic violence?

How rapidly we were treated to that tired argument (or iterations of it) that it’s individuals not guns that cause death. Of course, both things are valid. It’s feasible to simultaneously pursue new ways to prevent violent bigotry and keep guns away from its possible perpetrators.

In this city of immense splendor, of clear blue heavens above sea and sand, the ocean and the coastline – our shared community spaces – may not look entirely familiar again to the many who’ve noted that famous Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s obscene bloodshed.

We long right now for understanding and significance, for loved ones, and perhaps for the solace of beauty in art or nature.

This weekend many Australians are cancelling holiday gathering plans. Quiet contemplation will seem more in order.

But this is perhaps somewhat counterintuitive. For in these times of fear, outrage, sadness, confusion and grief we require each other more than ever.

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

But tragically, all of the indicators are that unity in public life and the community will be elusive this long, draining summer.