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While the nation settles into for a customary Christmas holiday during slow-moving days of beach and scorching heat set to the soundtrack of sporting matches and cicada song, this year the country’s summer atmosphere feels, unfortunately, like no other.

It would be a significant oversimplification to describe the national temperament after the antisemitic violent assault on Australian Jews during Bondi Hanukah festivities as one of simple discontent.

Throughout the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of the nation's urban centers – a tenor of initial shock, grief and terror is segueing to fury and bitter division.

Those who had previously missed the often voiced fears of the Jewish community are now highly attuned. Just as, they are attuned to reconciling the need for a far more urgent, vigorous official fight against anti-Jewish hatred with the freedom to demonstrate against genocide.

If ever there was a moment for a countrywide dialogue, it is now, when our faith in mankind is so deeply diminished. This is especially 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 trite hot takes of those with inflammatory, divisive stances but little understanding at all of that profound fragility.

This is a time when I regret not having a stronger spiritual belief. I mourn, because having faith in humanity – in mankind’s potential for kindness – has failed us so painfully. A different source, a greater power, is required.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have seen such extreme instances of human goodness. The heroism of individuals. The bravery of those present. First responders – law enforcement and paramedics, those who charged into the danger to help fellow humans, some publicly hailed but for the most part anonymous and unsung.

When the police tape still fluttered wildly all about Bondi, the necessity of social, religious and cultural solidarity was admirably promoted by faith leaders. It was a call of compassion and acceptance – of bringing together rather than splitting apart in a time of antisemitic slaughter.

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

Togetherness, light and love was the essence of belief.

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

And yet elements of the political landscape reacted so disgustingly swiftly with fragmentation, finger-pointing and accusation.

Some elected officials gravitated straight for the darkness, using the atrocity as a cynical opportunity to question Australia’s immigration policies.

Witness the dangerous message of disunity from veteran agitators of Australian racial division, capitalizing on the attack before the crime scene was even cold. Then read the statements of leadership aspirants while the investigation was still active.

Government has a formidable job to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is grieving and scared and looking for the hope and, importantly, answers to so many questions.

Like why, when the official terror alert was assessed as probable, did such a large public Hanukah event go ahead with such a grossly insufficient security presence? Like how could the alleged killers have multiple firearms in the family home when the security agency has so publicly and consistently alerted of the danger of antisemitic violence?

How rapidly we were subjected to that cliched line (or iterations of it) that it’s individuals not weapons that kill. Of course, each point are true. It’s feasible to at the same time pursue new ways to stop violent bigotry and keep firearms away from its possible perpetrators.

In this city of immense beauty, of clear blue heavens above sea and shore, the ocean and the beaches – our communal areas – may not look entirely familiar again to the multitude who’ve observed that famous Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s horrific bloodshed.

We long right now for understanding and significance, for loved ones, and perhaps for the solace of beauty in art or nature.

This weekend many Australians are calling off Christmas party plans. Reflective solitude will seem more in order.

But this is perhaps counterintuitively counterintuitive. For in these times of fear, anger, melancholy, bewilderment and loss we need each other now more than ever.

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

But tragically, all of the portents are that cohesion in public life and the community will be hard to find this long, enervating summer.