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As Australia winds down for a customary Christmas holiday during slow-moving days of coast and blistering heat accompanied by the background of sporting matches and insect sounds, this year the nation's summer mood feels, unfortunately, like no other.

It would be a dramatic understatement to describe the collective disposition after the anti-Jewish violent assault on Jewish Australians during Bondi Hanukah celebrations as one of mere ennui.

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, grief and terror is segueing to anger and bitter division.

Those who had previously missed the often voiced fears of Australian Jews are now acutely aware. Just as, they are attuned to reconciling the need for a much more immediate, energetic official crackdown against antisemitism with the right to peacefully protest against genocide.

If ever there was a moment for a countrywide dialogue, it is now, when our faith in mankind is so sorely diminished. This is especially so for those of us lucky never to have experienced the animosity and fear of faith-based targeting on this land or anywhere else.

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

This is a period when I lament not having a stronger spiritual belief. I lament, because believing in humanity – in mankind’s capacity for compassion – has let us down so acutely. Something else, a greater power, is needed.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have witnessed such extreme instances of human goodness. The heroism of individuals. The selflessness of bystanders. First responders – police officers and medical staff, those who charged into the danger to help others, some publicly hailed but for the most part anonymous and unheralded.

When the police tape still fluttered wildly all about Bondi, the necessity of community, religious and cultural solidarity was laudably championed by faith leaders. It was a call of compassion and tolerance – of unifying rather than dividing in a moment of antisemitic slaughter.

In keeping with the symbolism of the Festival of Lights (light amid darkness), there was so much fitting evocation of the need for hope.

Togetherness, light and compassion was the essence of belief.

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

And yet elements of the Australian polity reacted so nauseatingly quickly with fragmentation, finger-pointing and recrimination.

Some elected officials moved straight for the darkness, using tragedy as a calculating chance to question Australia’s migration rules.

Observe the dangerous rhetoric of division from longstanding agitators of Australian racial division, exploiting the attack before the crime scene was even cold. Then read the statements of leadership aspirants while the investigation was ongoing.

Government has a formidable task to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is grieving and frightened and seeking the light and, not least, answers to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the official terror alert was assessed as probable, did such a large open-air Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a grossly insufficient protection? 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 rapidly we were subjected to that cliched argument (or versions of it) that it’s people not guns that kill. Of course, both things are true. It’s feasible to simultaneously pursue new ways to prevent hate-fuelled violence and prevent firearms away from its potential perpetrators.

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

We long right now for understanding and significance, for loved ones, and perhaps for the consolation of aesthetics in art 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 somewhat against instinct. For in these times of fear, outrage, melancholy, confusion and grief we require each other more than ever.

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

But tragically, all of the portents are that cohesion in politics and society will be hard to find this extended, draining summer.