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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 sporting matches and insect sounds, this year the nation's summer mood feels, unfortunately, like no other.

It would be a dramatic oversimplification to describe the collective temperament after the anti-Jewish violent assault on Australian Jews during Bondi Hanukah celebrations as one of simple ennui.

Across the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of Australian cities – a tone of immediate shock, sorrow and horror is segueing to anger and bitter polarization.

Those who had previously missed the often voiced concerns of Australian Jews are now acutely aware. Just as, they are attuned to reconciling the need for a far more urgent, vigorous government and institutional crackdown against antisemitism with the right to peacefully protest against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a moment for a countrywide dialogue, it is now, when our faith in humanity is so deeply diminished. This is especially so for those of us fortunate enough never to have endured the hatred and fear of faith-based targeting on this land or anywhere else.

And yet the algorithms keep spewing at us the banal hot takes of those with inflammatory, divisive views but little understanding at all of that profound fragility.

This is a period when I regret not having a greater faith. I mourn, because having faith in humanity – in our potential for compassion – has failed us so acutely. Something else, something higher, is needed.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have seen such extreme instances of human decency. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The bravery of those present. First responders – police officers and paramedics, those who charged into the danger to aid fellow humans, some publicly hailed 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 cultural solidarity was admirably championed by religious figures. It was a message of compassion and acceptance – of unifying rather than dividing in a moment of targeted violence.

Consistent with the symbolism of Hanukah (light amid darkness), there was so much fitting reference of the need for lightness.

Togetherness, light and love was the essence of belief.

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

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

Some politicians moved straight for the pessimism, using tragedy as a calculating opportunity to question Australia’s immigration policies.

Witness the dangerous message of division from longstanding agitators 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.

Government has a daunting job to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is grieving and frightened and seeking the light and, not least, answers to so many questions.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was assessed as probable, did such a large public Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a woefully inadequate security presence? Like how could the alleged killers have six guns in the residence when the security agency has so openly and consistently alerted of the threat of antisemitic violence?

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

In this city of profound splendor, of pristine blue heavens above ocean and sand, the water and the beaches – our communal areas – may not seem quite the same again to the multitude who’ve noted that iconic Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s obscene violence.

We yearn 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 Christmas party plans. Quiet contemplation will seem more appropriate.

But this is perhaps counterintuitively against instinct. For in these times of fear, outrage, sadness, bewilderment and loss we require each other more than ever.

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

But tragically, all of the portents are that unity in politics and the community will be hard to find this long, enervating summer.