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While the nation settles into for a traditional Christmas holiday across slow-moving days of coast and blistering heat accompanied by the background of Test cricket and insect sounds, this year the country’s summer atmosphere feels, sadly, like none before.

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

Across the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of the nation's urban centers – a tenor of immediate shock, grief and terror is shifting to anger and bitter polarization.

Those who had not picked up on the often voiced concerns of Australian Jews are now highly attuned. Similarly, they are sensitive to balancing the need for a far more urgent, vigorous official crackdown against antisemitism with the freedom to peacefully protest against mass atrocities.

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

And yet the algorithms keep spewing at us the trite instant opinions of those with blistering, divisive stances but no sense at all of that profound vulnerability.

This is a period when I regret not having a greater faith. I mourn, because believing in people – in our potential 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 examples of human goodness. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The selflessness of bystanders. First responders – police officers and paramedics, those who ran towards the gunfire to help others, some publicly hailed but for the most part anonymous and unheralded.

When the police tape still waved in the wind all about Bondi, the necessity of social, religious and ethnic solidarity was laudably promoted by religious figures. It was a call of compassion and tolerance – of bringing together rather than splitting apart in a moment of antisemitic slaughter.

Consistent with the symbolism of Hanukah (illumination amid darkness), there was so much fitting evocation of the need for hope.

Unity, light and love was the message of belief.

‘Our shared community spaces may not appear quite the same again.’

And yet segments of the political landscape reacted so nauseatingly quickly with fragmentation, blame and accusation.

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

Witness the dangerous rhetoric of division from longstanding agitators of societal discord, capitalizing on the massacre before the crime scene was even cold. Then consider the words of political figures while the investigation was ongoing.

Government has a daunting job to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is mourning and frightened and looking for the hope and, importantly, answers to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was assessed as likely, did such a large open-air Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a woefully inadequate protection? Like how could the alleged killers have multiple firearms in the family home when the domestic intelligence organisation has so publicly and consistently warned of the threat of targeted attacks?

How quickly we were subjected to that tired argument (or iterations of it) that it’s people not weapons that kill. Naturally, both things are true. It’s possible to simultaneously pursue new ways to stop hate-fuelled violence and keep guns away from its potential perpetrators.

In this city of immense beauty, of clear blue heavens above sea and shore, the water and the beaches – our communal areas – may not look quite the same again to the multitude who’ve observed that famous Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s horrific violence.

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

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

But this is perhaps somewhat counterintuitive. For in these times of fear, outrage, melancholy, bewilderment and loss we require each other more than ever.

The comfort of community – the human glue of the unity in the very word – is what we likely need most.

But sadly, all of the portents are that cohesion in politics and society will be elusive this long, enervating summer.