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While the nation winds down for a customary Christmas holiday across slow-moving days of beach and scorching heat set to the soundtrack of Test cricket and insect sounds, this year the country’s summer mood feels, unfortunately, like none before.

It would be a dramatic understatement to describe the national disposition after the antisemitic violent assault on Australian Jews during the beachside Hanukah celebrations as one of simple discontent.

Throughout the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of the nation's urban centers – a tenor of immediate shock, sorrow and terror is shifting to anger and deep polarization.

Those who had not picked up on the frequently expressed fears of Australian Jews are now acutely aware. Just as, they are attuned to balancing the need for a much more immediate, energetic government and institutional fight against anti-Jewish hatred 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 fortunate enough never to have experienced the animosity and fear of faith-based targeting on this land or elsewhere.

And yet the algorithms keep spewing at us the trite hot takes of those with inflammatory, polarizing views but no sense 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 our potential for compassion – has let us down so painfully. A different source, a greater power, is required.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have witnessed such extreme examples of human decency. The heroism of individuals. The selflessness of bystanders. Emergency personnel – law enforcement and paramedics, those who ran towards the danger to help others, some publicly hailed but for the most part unnamed and unsung.

When the police tape still fluttered in the wind all about Bondi, the imperative of social, religious and cultural solidarity was laudably championed by faith leaders. It was a call of compassion and tolerance – of unifying rather than dividing in a time of antisemitic slaughter.

In keeping with the symbolism of the Festival of Lights (illumination amid gloom), there was so much appropriate reference of the need for hope.

Togetherness, hope and compassion was the message of belief.

‘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 politicians moved straight for the darkness, using tragedy as a calculating chance to question Australia’s migration rules.

Observe the harmful rhetoric of division from veteran agitators of Australian racial division, capitalizing on the massacre before the crime scene was even cold. Then consider the words of leadership aspirants while the probe was still active.

Politics has a formidable task to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is mourning and scared and seeking the light and, not least, explanations to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the official terror alert was judged as likely, did such a large open-air Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a woefully inadequate security presence? Like how could the accused attackers have multiple firearms in the residence when the domestic intelligence organisation has so openly and repeatedly warned of the danger of antisemitic violence?

How quickly we were treated to that cliched line (or versions of it) that it’s people not weapons that kill. Naturally, both things are valid. It’s feasible to simultaneously pursue new ways to stop hate-fuelled violence and keep guns away from its potential perpetrators.

In this city of profound splendor, of pristine blue heavens above ocean and sand, the water and the beaches – our communal areas – may not look entirely familiar again to the multitude who’ve noted that famous Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s obscene bloodshed.

We yearn right now for understanding and meaning, for family, and perhaps for the solace of beauty in culture or the natural world.

This weekend many Australians are cancelling Christmas party plans. Reflective solitude will seem more appropriate.

But this is perhaps counterintuitively counterintuitive. For in these days of fear, anger, sadness, confusion and grief 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 likely need most.

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