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As Australia winds down for a traditional Christmas holiday across slow-moving days of coast and scorching heat accompanied by the soundtrack 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 characterize the collective temperament after the antisemitic violent assault on Australian Jews during Bondi Hanukah festivities as one of simple ennui.

Across the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of the nation's urban centers – a tone of initial surprise, sorrow and horror is segueing to fury and deep polarization.

Those who had previously missed the often voiced fears of the Jewish community are now acutely aware. Similarly, they are sensitive to reconciling the need for a much more immediate, energetic government and institutional fight against antisemitism 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 humanity is so deeply diminished. This is especially so for those of us lucky never to have endured the animosity and fear of faith-based persecution on this continent or anywhere else.

And yet the algorithms keep churning out at us the banal hot takes of those with inflammatory, divisive stances but little understanding at all of that terrifying vulnerability.

This is a time when I regret not having a stronger faith. I lament, because believing in humanity – in mankind’s capacity for kindness – has failed us so painfully. A different source, a greater power, is needed.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have witnessed such extreme examples of human goodness. The heroism of individuals. The bravery of those present. Emergency personnel – police officers and paramedics, those who charged into the gunfire to help fellow humans, some recognised but for the most part anonymous and unheralded.

When the barrier cordon still fluttered in the wind all about Bondi, the imperative of social, religious and ethnic solidarity was laudably championed by religious figures. It was a message of love and acceptance – of bringing together rather than splitting apart in a moment of targeted violence.

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

Togetherness, light and love was the essence of belief.

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

And yet segments 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 question Australia’s migration rules.

Witness the dangerous message of disunity from longstanding fomenters of Australian racial division, exploiting the attack before the crime scene was even cold. Then consider the words of political figures while the probe was still active.

Politics has a daunting task to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is grieving and frightened and looking for the light and, not least, explanations to so many questions.

Like why, when the official terror alert was assessed as likely, did such a significant public Hanukah event go ahead with such a grossly inadequate protection? Like how could the accused attackers have six guns in the family home when the domestic intelligence organisation has so publicly and consistently alerted of the threat of targeted attacks?

How rapidly we were subjected to that tired argument (or versions of it) that it’s people not guns that cause death. Of course, each point are valid. It’s feasible to at the same time pursue new ways to prevent violent bigotry and keep firearms away from its possible actors.

In this city of immense splendor, of clear azure skies above sea and shore, the water and the beaches – our communal areas – may not look 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 consolation of aesthetics in culture or the natural world.

This weekend many Australians are calling off Christmas party plans. Quiet contemplation will seem more appropriate.

But this is perhaps counterintuitively against instinct. For in these times of anxiety, anger, melancholy, bewilderment and loss we require each other now more than ever.

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

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