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As Australia winds down for a traditional Christmas holiday during languorous days of coast and blistering heat accompanied by the soundtrack of Test cricket and cicada song, this year the country’s summer atmosphere seems, unfortunately, like none before.

It would be a significant understatement to characterize the collective disposition after the antisemitic violent assault on Jewish Australians during Bondi Hanukah festivities as one of simple ennui.

Across the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of the nation's urban centers – a tone of initial shock, grief and horror is segueing to fury and deep division.

Those who had previously missed the frequently expressed fears of the Jewish community are now highly attuned. Similarly, they are sensitive to balancing the need for a far more urgent, vigorous official fight against anti-Jewish hatred with the right to demonstrate against genocide.

If ever there was a moment for a countrywide dialogue, it is now, when our faith in humanity is so deeply depleted. This is particularly so for those of us fortunate enough never to have experienced the animosity and dread of faith-based targeting on this land or elsewhere.

And yet the algorithms keep churning out at us the banal instant opinions of those with blistering, divisive views but no sense at all of that terrifying fragility.

This is a period when I regret not having a stronger spiritual belief. I lament, because believing in people – in mankind’s capacity for kindness – has let us down so acutely. A different source, a greater power, is required.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have seen such extreme examples of human decency. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The selflessness of bystanders. Emergency personnel – police officers and paramedics, those who ran towards the gunfire to aid 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 social, religious and cultural unity was laudably championed by faith leaders. It was a call of compassion and tolerance – of unifying rather than dividing in a time of antisemitic slaughter.

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

Togetherness, hope and compassion was the essence of belief.

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

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

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

Observe the harmful rhetoric of division from longstanding fomenters of Australian racial division, 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 task to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is grieving and frightened and seeking the hope and, not least, explanations to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the official terror alert was assessed as probable, did such a large public Hanukah event go ahead with such a woefully insufficient protection? Like how could the alleged killers have multiple firearms in the residence when the domestic intelligence organisation has so publicly and repeatedly warned of the danger of antisemitic violence?

How quickly we were subjected to that cliched argument (or iterations of it) that it’s individuals not weapons that cause death. Of course, both things are true. It’s possible to at the same time pursue new ways to stop violent bigotry and prevent guns away from its potential perpetrators.

In this city of profound beauty, of clear blue heavens above sea and sand, the ocean and the beaches – our communal areas – may not look entirely familiar again to the multitude who’ve observed that iconic Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s obscene violence.

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

This weekend many Australians are cancelling Christmas party plans. Reflective solitude will feel more appropriate.

But this is perhaps somewhat against instinct. For in these days of fear, outrage, sadness, bewilderment and loss 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 tragically, all of the portents are that unity in politics and society will be hard to find this extended, draining summer.