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While the nation settles into for a traditional Christmas holiday during languorous days of coast and blistering heat set to the soundtrack of Test cricket and insect sounds, this year the nation's summer mood seems, sadly, like no other.

It would be a significant understatement to describe the collective temperament after the antisemitic violent assault on Jewish Australians during the beachside Hanukah festivities as one of mere ennui.

Throughout 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 horror is shifting to fury and bitter polarization.

Those who had not picked up on the frequently expressed fears of Australian Jews are now highly attuned. Just as, they are attuned to balancing the need for a far more urgent, energetic government and institutional crackdown against anti-Jewish hatred with the freedom 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 deeply depleted. This is especially so for those of us fortunate enough never to have endured the animosity and fear of religious and ethnic targeting on this continent or elsewhere.

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

This is a time when I regret not having a greater spiritual belief. I lament, because believing in people – in our potential for kindness – has let us down so painfully. Something else, a greater power, is needed.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have witnessed such profound examples of human goodness. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The selflessness of bystanders. Emergency personnel – police officers and paramedics, those who charged into the gunfire to help others, some recognised but for the most part anonymous and unheralded.

When the barrier cordon still waved wildly all about Bondi, the necessity of community, faith-based and ethnic solidarity was laudably championed by faith leaders. It was a message of compassion and tolerance – of bringing together rather than splitting apart in a time of targeted violence.

In keeping with the symbolism of Hanukah (light amid gloom), there was so much fitting evocation of the need for hope.

Unity, hope and love was the message of faith.

‘Our public places may not look quite the same again.’

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

Some elected officials gravitated straight for the darkness, using the atrocity as a calculating opportunity to challenge Australia’s immigration policies.

Witness the harmful rhetoric of division from longstanding agitators of Australian racial division, capitalizing on the attack before the site was even cold. Then read the words of leadership aspirants while the probe was still active.

Politics has a daunting job to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is grieving and frightened and seeking the hope and, not least, answers to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the official terror alert was judged as likely, did such a large public Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a woefully insufficient protection? Like how could the accused attackers have six guns in the residence when the security agency has so publicly and consistently warned of the danger of antisemitic violence?

How quickly we were subjected to that tired line (or versions of it) that it’s individuals not weapons that cause death. Naturally, each point are true. It’s possible to simultaneously seek new ways to prevent violent bigotry and keep guns away from its potential perpetrators.

In this city of immense beauty, 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 multitude who’ve noted that famous Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s obscene violence.

We long right now for understanding and meaning, for loved ones, and perhaps for the consolation of aesthetics in culture or the natural world.

This weekend many Australians are cancelling holiday gathering plans. Quiet contemplation will feel more appropriate.

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

The comfort of community – the human glue 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 the community will be elusive this extended, draining summer.