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As Australia settles into for a traditional Christmas holiday during languorous days of beach and scorching heat set to the background of Test cricket and insect sounds, this year the country’s summer mood seems, sadly, like none before.

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

Throughout the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of the nation's urban centers – a tenor of initial surprise, sorrow and terror is segueing to fury and deep polarization.

Those who had previously missed the frequently expressed concerns of the Jewish community are now acutely aware. Just as, they are sensitive to reconciling the need for a much more immediate, energetic official crackdown against anti-Jewish hatred with the right to peacefully protest against genocide.

If ever there was a time for a countrywide dialogue, it is now, when our belief in mankind is so sorely depleted. This is particularly so for those of us fortunate enough never to have experienced the animosity and dread of faith-based persecution on this continent or anywhere else.

And yet the social media feeds keep spewing at us the banal hot takes of those with blistering, polarizing stances but little understanding at all of that terrifying fragility.

This is a time when I lament not having a stronger spiritual belief. I lament, because having faith in humanity – in mankind’s potential for kindness – has failed us so painfully. A different source, something higher, is needed.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have witnessed such profound examples of human goodness. The heroism of individuals. The bravery of those present. Emergency personnel – police officers and paramedics, those who ran towards the gunfire to help others, some publicly hailed but for the most part unnamed and unheralded.

When the police tape still waved wildly all about Bondi, the imperative of social, religious and cultural solidarity was admirably promoted by religious figures. It was a call of compassion and tolerance – of bringing together rather than splitting apart in a moment of targeted violence.

In keeping with the meaning of Hanukah (illumination amid gloom), there was so much appropriate reference of the need for lightness.

Togetherness, hope and love was the message of belief.

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

And yet elements of the political landscape reacted so nauseatingly swiftly with division, blame and recrimination.

Some elected officials gravitated straight for the pessimism, using the atrocity as a calculating chance to challenge Australia’s migration rules.

Witness the dangerous message of division from longstanding fomenters of Australian racial division, capitalizing on the attack before the site was even cold. Then consider the statements of political figures while the probe was ongoing.

Politics has a daunting task to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is grieving and frightened and looking for the hope and, importantly, answers to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the official terror alert was judged as probable, did such a large open-air Hanukah event go ahead with such a woefully insufficient security presence? Like how could the accused attackers have six guns in the family home when the domestic intelligence organisation has so publicly and repeatedly warned of the threat of targeted attacks?

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

In this metropolis of profound beauty, of pristine azure skies above ocean and sand, the water and the beaches – our communal areas – may not seem quite the same again to the multitude who’ve observed that famous Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s obscene bloodshed.

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

This weekend many Australians are calling off Christmas party plans. Quiet contemplation will feel more in order.

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

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

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