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While the nation winds down for a customary Christmas holiday during slow-moving days of beach and scorching heat accompanied by the soundtrack of Test cricket and cicada song, this year the country’s summer atmosphere feels, sadly, like no other.

It would be a dramatic oversimplification to characterize the national disposition after the anti-Jewish violent assault on Jewish Australians during Bondi Hanukah celebrations as one of mere discontent.

Across the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of the nation's urban centers – a tone of initial surprise, sorrow and terror is shifting to anger and deep polarization.

Those who had not picked up on the often voiced fears of Australian Jews are now highly attuned. Just as, they are attuned to reconciling the need for a much more immediate, vigorous government and institutional crackdown against antisemitism with the right to demonstrate against genocide.

If ever there was a time for a countrywide dialogue, it is now, when our faith in mankind is so deeply diminished. This is particularly so for those of us fortunate enough never to have endured the hatred and fear of religious and ethnic persecution on this land or anywhere else.

And yet the social media feeds keep spewing at us the banal hot takes of those with blistering, polarizing stances but little understanding at all of that profound vulnerability.

This is a time when I lament not having a greater spiritual belief. I mourn, because having faith in people – in mankind’s potential for compassion – has let us down so acutely. A different source, a greater power, is needed.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have witnessed such profound examples of human goodness. The heroism of individuals. The selflessness of bystanders. First responders – law enforcement and paramedics, those who ran towards the danger to aid others, some recognised but for the most part unnamed and unheralded.

When the police tape still waved wildly all about Bondi, the necessity of community, faith-based and ethnic solidarity was admirably promoted by faith leaders. It was a message of compassion and acceptance – of unifying rather than dividing in a moment of antisemitic slaughter.

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

Unity, light and compassion was the message of faith.

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

And yet segments of the Australian polity responded so nauseatingly quickly with division, finger-pointing and recrimination.

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

Observe the harmful message of disunity from longstanding agitators of societal discord, exploiting the attack before the crime scene was even cold. Then read the words of leadership aspirants while the probe was ongoing.

Politics has a formidable task to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is mourning and frightened and seeking the hope and, not least, answers to so many questions.

Like why, when the official terror alert was judged as probable, did such a significant open-air Hanukah event go ahead with such a grossly insufficient security presence? Like how could the alleged killers have six guns in the family home when the security agency has so openly and consistently alerted of the danger of targeted attacks?

How quickly we were subjected to that tired line (or versions of it) that it’s individuals not weapons that kill. Naturally, each point are true. It’s feasible to at the same time pursue new ways to stop hate-fuelled violence and prevent firearms away from its potential actors.

In this metropolis of immense splendor, of pristine blue heavens above ocean and shore, the water and the coastline – our communal areas – may not look quite the same again to the multitude who’ve observed that iconic Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s obscene bloodshed.

We long right now for understanding and significance, for family, and perhaps for the solace of aesthetics 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 anxiety, anger, sadness, confusion and loss we need each other more than ever.

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

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