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While Australia winds down for a customary Christmas holiday across languorous days of coast and blistering heat accompanied by the soundtrack of sporting matches and cicada song, this year the country’s summer mood seems, sadly, like no other.

It would be a significant oversimplification to characterize the national temperament 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 tone of immediate shock, sorrow and terror is shifting to fury and deep polarization.

Those who had not picked up on the frequently expressed fears of the Jewish community are now highly attuned. Just as, they are sensitive to reconciling the need for a far more urgent, vigorous official crackdown against antisemitism with the right to demonstrate against mass atrocities.

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

And yet the social media feeds keep churning out at us the banal hot takes of those with inflammatory, divisive stances but little understanding at all of that terrifying fragility.

This is a period when I regret not having a greater spiritual belief. I mourn, because having faith in humanity – in mankind’s capacity for kindness – has failed us so acutely. Something else, something higher, is required.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have witnessed 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 charged into the gunfire to help fellow humans, some recognised but for the most part anonymous and unsung.

When the barrier cordon still fluttered wildly all about Bondi, the necessity of social, faith-based and cultural unity was laudably promoted by religious figures. It was a call of love and acceptance – of bringing together rather than dividing in a time of targeted violence.

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

Unity, light and compassion was the essence of faith.

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

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

Some elected officials gravitated straight for the pessimism, using tragedy as a cynical chance to challenge Australia’s migration rules.

Observe the harmful rhetoric of division from veteran agitators of Australian racial division, exploiting the massacre before the crime scene was even cold. Then read the words of leadership aspirants while the investigation was ongoing.

Government has a daunting task to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is mourning and frightened and seeking the hope and, importantly, answers to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the official terror alert was assessed as probable, did such a significant open-air Hanukah event go ahead with such a woefully inadequate protection? Like how could the accused attackers have six guns in the family home when the security agency has so openly and consistently warned of the threat of antisemitic violence?

How rapidly we were treated to that cliched argument (or iterations of it) that it’s individuals not guns that kill. Of course, each point are valid. It’s possible to simultaneously seek new ways to prevent hate-fuelled violence and prevent guns away from its possible actors.

In this metropolis of profound splendor, of clear azure skies above sea and shore, the water and the beaches – our shared community spaces – may not seem entirely familiar again to the many who’ve noted that famous Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s obscene violence.

We yearn right now for comprehension and significance, for loved ones, and perhaps for the consolation of aesthetics in culture or nature.

This weekend many Australians are cancelling holiday gathering plans. Reflective solitude will feel more in order.

But this is perhaps counterintuitively counterintuitive. For in these days of anxiety, outrage, melancholy, confusion and grief we require each other now more than ever.

The reassurance of togetherness – the human glue of the unity in the very word – is what we probably need most.

But sadly, all of the indicators are that cohesion in public life and society will be hard to find this long, enervating summer.