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While the nation settles into for a customary Christmas holiday during slow-moving days of coast and blistering heat accompanied by the background of Test cricket and cicada song, this year the nation's summer mood feels, unfortunately, like no other.

It would be a significant understatement to describe the collective disposition after the anti-Jewish violent assault on Jewish Australians during Bondi Hanukah festivities as one of simple discontent.

Across the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of the nation's urban centers – a tenor of immediate surprise, sorrow and terror is shifting to fury and bitter polarization.

Those who had previously missed the frequently expressed concerns of Australian Jews are now acutely aware. Similarly, they are sensitive to reconciling the need for a much more immediate, energetic official crackdown against antisemitism with the right to demonstrate against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a time for a countrywide dialogue, it is now, when our faith in mankind is so sorely diminished. This is especially so for those of us fortunate enough never to have endured the hatred and dread of faith-based persecution on this land or elsewhere.

And yet the algorithms keep spewing at us the trite hot takes of those with blistering, divisive stances 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 mankind’s potential for kindness – has let us down so acutely. Something else, a greater power, is needed.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have seen such extreme examples of human decency. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The bravery of those present. First responders – police officers and paramedics, those who ran towards the gunfire to aid others, 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, religious and cultural solidarity was laudably promoted by faith leaders. It was a call of compassion and tolerance – of unifying rather than splitting apart in a time of targeted violence.

In keeping with the meaning of the Festival of Lights (illumination amid gloom), there was so much fitting evocation of the need for hope.

Togetherness, hope and compassion was the message of belief.

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

And yet elements of the political landscape reacted so disgustingly swiftly with fragmentation, blame and accusation.

Some politicians gravitated straight for the pessimism, using the atrocity as a calculating chance to challenge Australia’s immigration policies.

Witness the harmful message of division from longstanding agitators of societal discord, exploiting the massacre before the site was even cold. Then consider the words of political figures while the probe was ongoing.

Politics has a daunting job to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is mourning and scared and looking for the light and, not least, answers to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was assessed as likely, did such a significant public Hanukah event 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 publicly and consistently alerted of the threat of antisemitic violence?

How quickly we were treated to that tired line (or versions of it) that it’s people not weapons that kill. Naturally, both things are true. It’s possible to at the same time seek new ways to prevent hate-fuelled violence and keep guns away from its potential actors.

In this metropolis of profound splendor, of pristine azure skies above sea and sand, the water and the beaches – our shared community spaces – may not seem quite the same again to the many who’ve observed that famous Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s obscene violence.

We yearn right now for comprehension 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 days of fear, anger, melancholy, bewilderment and loss we require each other now more than ever.

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

But sadly, all of the portents are that cohesion in politics and society will be elusive this long, draining summer.