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As the nation winds down for a customary Christmas holiday during slow-moving days of coast and scorching heat set to the background of sporting matches and cicada song, this year the country’s summer atmosphere seems, sadly, like none before.

It would be a dramatic oversimplification to describe the national temperament after the antisemitic terrorist attack on Jewish Australians during Bondi Hanukah festivities as one of mere discontent.

Across the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of the nation's urban centers – a tone of immediate shock, sorrow and horror is shifting to anger and bitter division.

Those who had not picked up on the often voiced concerns of Australian Jews are now highly attuned. Just as, they are attuned to reconciling the need for a much more immediate, energetic government and institutional crackdown against anti-Jewish hatred with the freedom to demonstrate against genocide.

If ever there was a time for a countrywide dialogue, it is now, when our belief in humanity is so sorely depleted. This is especially so for those of us fortunate enough never to have endured the hatred and fear of religious and ethnic targeting on this land or anywhere else.

And yet the algorithms keep spewing at us the banal instant opinions of those with inflammatory, 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 believing in humanity – in our potential for kindness – has failed us so painfully. Something else, something higher, is required.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have seen such profound instances of human decency. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The selflessness of bystanders. First responders – law enforcement and paramedics, those who ran towards the danger to aid fellow humans, some publicly hailed but for the most part unnamed and unsung.

When the police tape still waved wildly all about Bondi, the imperative of social, faith-based and ethnic solidarity was laudably championed by religious figures. It was a call of compassion and acceptance – of bringing together rather than dividing in a time of targeted violence.

Consistent with the meaning of the Festival of Lights (light amid gloom), there was so much appropriate evocation of the need for hope.

Unity, hope and compassion was the message of faith.

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

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

Some elected officials gravitated straight for the pessimism, using tragedy as a calculating opportunity to challenge Australia’s immigration policies.

Witness the harmful message of division from longstanding fomenters of societal discord, exploiting the attack before the crime scene was even cold. Then read the statements of political figures while the probe was still active.

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

Like why, when the official terror alert was judged as probable, did such a significant open-air Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a woefully inadequate security presence? Like how could the alleged killers have multiple firearms in the family home when the security agency has so openly and consistently alerted of the threat of antisemitic violence?

How rapidly we were subjected to that cliched line (or versions of it) that it’s individuals not guns that kill. Of course, each point are valid. It’s feasible to at the same time seek new ways to prevent hate-fuelled violence and keep guns away from its possible actors.

In this city of profound beauty, of clear azure skies above sea and sand, the water and the coastline – our shared community spaces – may not look quite the same again to the multitude who’ve observed that famous Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s obscene violence.

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

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

But this is perhaps counterintuitively counterintuitive. For in these times of anxiety, outrage, melancholy, bewilderment and grief we need 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 indicators are that unity in politics and the community will be elusive this extended, enervating summer.