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As the nation settles into for a customary Christmas holiday across slow-moving days of beach and scorching heat accompanied by 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 understatement to characterize the collective temperament after the anti-Jewish violent assault on Jewish Australians during Bondi Hanukah festivities as one of simple ennui.

Throughout the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of the nation's urban centers – a tone of initial shock, grief and horror is segueing to fury and bitter division.

Those who had not picked up on the frequently expressed fears of Australian Jews are now acutely aware. Similarly, they are attuned to reconciling the need for a far more urgent, vigorous government and institutional fight against anti-Jewish hatred 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 depleted. This is particularly so for those of us fortunate enough never to have endured the animosity and dread of religious and ethnic targeting on this land or anywhere else.

And yet the social media feeds keep spewing at us the trite hot takes of those with inflammatory, divisive stances but no sense at all of that terrifying fragility.

This is a period when I lament not having a stronger faith. I lament, because believing in people – in mankind’s potential for compassion – has let us down so painfully. Something else, something higher, is needed.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have witnessed such profound instances of human goodness. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The selflessness of bystanders. First responders – law enforcement and paramedics, those who ran towards the gunfire to help others, some publicly hailed but for the most part unnamed and unheralded.

When the police tape still waved in the wind all about Bondi, the imperative of community, religious and ethnic unity was laudably championed by religious figures. It was a call of compassion and acceptance – of unifying rather than splitting apart in a moment of targeted violence.

Consistent with the symbolism of Hanukah (light amid gloom), there was so much appropriate reference of the need for lightness.

Unity, hope and compassion was the essence of belief.

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

And yet segments of the Australian polity responded so nauseatingly swiftly with fragmentation, finger-pointing and accusation.

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

Observe the harmful rhetoric of division from longstanding fomenters of Australian racial division, capitalizing on the attack before the crime scene was even cold. Then consider the statements of leadership aspirants while the probe was ongoing.

Politics has a daunting job to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is grieving and frightened and looking for the light and, not least, explanations to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the official terror alert was assessed as probable, did such a significant public Hanukah event go ahead with such a woefully inadequate security presence? Like how could the alleged killers have six guns in the family home when the domestic intelligence organisation has so openly and consistently alerted of the threat of antisemitic violence?

How quickly we were treated to that tired line (or versions of it) that it’s people not weapons that kill. Of course, each point are true. It’s possible to simultaneously seek new ways to stop violent bigotry and prevent firearms away from its potential perpetrators.

In this city of profound beauty, of pristine azure skies above sea and sand, the water and the coastline – our shared community spaces – may not look entirely familiar again to the many who’ve noted that iconic Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s horrific violence.

We yearn right now for understanding and significance, for family, and perhaps for the solace of aesthetics in art or nature.

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

But this is perhaps somewhat counterintuitive. For in these days of anxiety, outrage, sadness, bewilderment and grief we need each other now more than ever.

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

But sadly, all of the portents are that cohesion in public life and the community will be elusive this extended, enervating summer.