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While Australia winds down for a traditional Christmas holiday across slow-moving days of coast and scorching heat set to the background of sporting matches and insect sounds, this year the country’s summer atmosphere feels, unfortunately, like no other.

It would be a dramatic oversimplification to describe the national disposition after the anti-Jewish violent assault on Jewish Australians during Bondi Hanukah celebrations as one of simple discontent.

Throughout the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of the nation's urban centers – a tone of initial surprise, grief and horror is segueing to anger and bitter division.

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

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 fear of religious and ethnic targeting on this continent or elsewhere.

And yet the social media feeds keep spewing at us the banal hot takes of those with blistering, divisive views but little understanding at all of that terrifying fragility.

This is a time when I regret not having a greater spiritual belief. I lament, because believing in people – in mankind’s capacity for compassion – has let us down so acutely. Something else, something higher, is required.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have witnessed such profound 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 others, some recognised but for the most part unnamed and unheralded.

When the barrier cordon still fluttered wildly all about Bondi, the imperative of community, faith-based and cultural solidarity was admirably championed by faith leaders. It was a message of compassion and tolerance – of bringing together rather than splitting apart in a moment of antisemitic slaughter.

Consistent with the symbolism of the Festival of Lights (illumination amid darkness), there was so much appropriate reference of the need for hope.

Unity, light and love was the message of belief.

‘Our public places may not look quite the same again.’

And yet segments of the political landscape responded so disgustingly quickly with division, blame and accusation.

Some politicians moved straight for the pessimism, using tragedy as a calculating chance to question Australia’s immigration policies.

Witness the dangerous message of disunity from veteran agitators of societal discord, exploiting the massacre before the crime scene was even cold. Then read the words of political figures while the investigation was still active.

Politics has a formidable job to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is grieving and frightened and seeking the light and, importantly, explanations 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 woefully insufficient security presence? Like how could the accused attackers have multiple firearms in the residence when the security agency has so openly and repeatedly alerted of the danger of targeted attacks?

How rapidly we were subjected to that tired line (or versions of it) that it’s people not guns that cause death. Of course, both things are true. It’s feasible to simultaneously pursue new ways to stop violent bigotry and keep guns away from its potential perpetrators.

In this city of profound beauty, of pristine blue heavens above ocean and sand, the ocean and the beaches – our communal areas – may not look quite the same again to the multitude who’ve noted that famous 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 solace of beauty in culture or nature.

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

But this is perhaps counterintuitively against instinct. For in these days of fear, outrage, sadness, bewilderment and grief we require 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 indicators are that unity in public life and society will be elusive this long, enervating summer.