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While Australia winds down for a traditional Christmas holiday during languorous days of beach and blistering heat accompanied by the background of Test cricket and insect sounds, this year the nation's summer atmosphere feels, sadly, like no other.

It would be a significant understatement to characterize the collective 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 segueing to fury and deep polarization.

Those who had previously missed the frequently expressed fears of Australian Jews are now highly attuned. Similarly, they are attuned to reconciling the need for a much more immediate, vigorous official crackdown against anti-Jewish hatred with the freedom to peacefully protest against genocide.

If ever there was a time for a countrywide dialogue, it is now, when our faith in humanity is so deeply diminished. This is particularly so for those of us fortunate enough never to have endured the hatred and dread of religious and ethnic persecution on this continent or elsewhere.

And yet the algorithms keep spewing at us the banal hot takes of those with blistering, polarizing stances but little understanding at all of that profound vulnerability.

This is a period when I regret not having a stronger faith. I mourn, because having faith in humanity – in mankind’s potential for compassion – has failed us so painfully. Something else, a greater power, is required.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have witnessed such extreme instances of human decency. The heroism of individuals. The bravery of those present. First responders – police officers and medical staff, those who ran towards the gunfire to aid others, some recognised but for the most part unnamed and unsung.

When the police tape still fluttered wildly all about Bondi, the necessity of community, religious and ethnic solidarity was laudably championed by religious figures. It was a message of compassion and tolerance – of unifying rather than splitting apart in a time of targeted violence.

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

Unity, hope and love was the message of faith.

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

And yet segments of the Australian polity responded so nauseatingly swiftly with division, blame and recrimination.

Some politicians gravitated straight for the darkness, using the atrocity as a cynical opportunity to question Australia’s migration rules.

Witness the harmful rhetoric of division from veteran fomenters of societal discord, exploiting the attack before the site was even cold. Then consider the words of political figures while the probe was ongoing.

Government has a daunting job to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is grieving and scared and looking for the light and, not least, explanations to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was assessed as likely, did such a significant public Hanukah event go ahead with such a woefully 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 threat of targeted attacks?

How rapidly we were treated to that cliched argument (or versions of it) that it’s people not weapons that cause death. Naturally, both things are valid. It’s feasible to simultaneously pursue new ways to stop violent bigotry and prevent firearms away from its potential perpetrators.

In this city of immense splendor, of pristine azure skies above sea and sand, the water and the beaches – our shared community spaces – may not seem entirely familiar again to the multitude who’ve observed that famous Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s obscene bloodshed.

We long right now for understanding and significance, for family, and perhaps for the solace of beauty in art or the natural world.

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

But this is perhaps somewhat against instinct. For in these days of fear, outrage, melancholy, confusion 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 likely need most.

But tragically, all of the indicators are that cohesion in politics and the community will be hard to find this extended, enervating summer.