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While Australia settles into for a customary Christmas holiday during languorous days of coast and scorching heat accompanied by the soundtrack of sporting matches and cicada song, this year the nation's summer atmosphere seems, sadly, like no other.

It would be a dramatic understatement to characterize the collective disposition after the anti-Jewish violent assault on Australian Jews during the beachside Hanukah celebrations as one of simple ennui.

Throughout the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of Australian cities – a tenor of initial surprise, sorrow and horror is shifting to anger and deep polarization.

Those who had not picked up on the often voiced concerns of the Jewish community are now acutely aware. Just as, they are attuned to balancing the need for a far more urgent, vigorous government and institutional fight against antisemitism with the freedom to peacefully protest against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a moment for a countrywide dialogue, it is now, when our belief in humanity is so deeply diminished. This is particularly so for those of us fortunate enough never to have experienced the animosity and fear of faith-based persecution on this continent or elsewhere.

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

This is a period when I lament not having a greater faith. I mourn, because believing in humanity – in mankind’s potential for kindness – has let us down so painfully. A different source, something higher, is required.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have seen such extreme instances of human goodness. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The bravery of those present. First responders – law enforcement and paramedics, those who ran towards the gunfire to help fellow humans, some recognised but for the most part anonymous and unheralded.

When the barrier cordon still waved in the wind all about Bondi, the imperative of social, faith-based and ethnic solidarity was laudably promoted by faith leaders. It was a call of love and tolerance – of unifying rather than splitting apart in a moment of targeted violence.

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

Togetherness, hope and love was the essence of belief.

‘Our shared community spaces may not look exactly as they did again.’

And yet segments of the political landscape reacted so disgustingly quickly with fragmentation, blame and recrimination.

Some politicians moved straight for the darkness, using tragedy as a cynical chance to challenge Australia’s migration rules.

Witness the dangerous message of disunity from veteran fomenters of Australian racial division, exploiting the massacre before the crime scene was even cold. Then read the statements of political figures while the investigation was still active.

Politics has a daunting job to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is mourning and scared and looking for the hope and, importantly, answers to so many questions.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was assessed as probable, did such a significant open-air Hanukah event go ahead with such a woefully inadequate 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 treated to that tired argument (or iterations of it) that it’s individuals not guns that cause death. Of course, both things are valid. It’s feasible to simultaneously seek new ways to stop hate-fuelled violence and keep guns away from its possible perpetrators.

In this city of immense splendor, of clear azure skies above sea and sand, the ocean and the beaches – our communal areas – may not look quite the same again to the many who’ve noted that famous Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s horrific violence.

We long right now for comprehension and meaning, for family, and perhaps for the consolation of aesthetics in culture or the natural world.

This weekend many Australians are calling off holiday gathering plans. Quiet contemplation will seem more in order.

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

The comfort of togetherness – 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 society will be hard to find this long, enervating summer.