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As Australia winds down for a customary Christmas holiday across slow-moving days of beach and blistering heat set to the background of Test cricket and insect sounds, this year the country’s summer atmosphere feels, sadly, like no other.

It would be a dramatic understatement to describe the national disposition after the antisemitic violent assault on Jewish Australians during Bondi Hanukah festivities as one of mere discontent.

Throughout the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of the nation's urban centers – a tenor of initial shock, sorrow and horror is segueing to fury and deep division.

Those who had not picked up on the frequently expressed concerns of the Jewish community are now acutely aware. Just as, they are sensitive to reconciling the need for a far more urgent, vigorous official fight against anti-Jewish hatred with the right to peacefully protest against mass atrocities.

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

And yet the algorithms keep churning out at us the banal hot takes of those with blistering, polarizing views but no sense 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 our potential for kindness – has failed us so acutely. A different source, something higher, is needed.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have witnessed such extreme examples of human decency. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The selflessness of bystanders. Emergency personnel – police officers and paramedics, those who charged into the gunfire to aid others, some recognised but for the most part anonymous and unheralded.

When the barrier cordon still waved wildly all about Bondi, the imperative of social, faith-based and cultural solidarity was laudably promoted by faith leaders. It was a call of love and tolerance – of unifying rather than splitting apart in a time of targeted violence.

Consistent with the meaning of the Festival of Lights (illumination amid gloom), there was so much appropriate evocation of the need for hope.

Unity, hope and love was the essence of faith.

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

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

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

Observe the dangerous rhetoric of division from veteran fomenters of Australian racial division, capitalizing on the attack before the crime scene was even cold. Then read the statements of political figures while the probe was still active.

Government has a formidable job to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is mourning and frightened and seeking the light and, not least, answers to so many questions.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was assessed as probable, did such a significant open-air Hanukah event go ahead with such a grossly insufficient security presence? Like how could the accused attackers have multiple firearms in the residence when the domestic intelligence organisation has so publicly and repeatedly warned of the threat of targeted attacks?

How rapidly we were subjected to that cliched line (or iterations of it) that it’s individuals not guns that cause death. Naturally, both things are true. It’s possible to at the same time pursue new ways to stop violent bigotry and prevent firearms away from its potential perpetrators.

In this metropolis of immense beauty, of clear azure skies above ocean and sand, the water and the coastline – our communal areas – 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 comprehension and meaning, for family, and perhaps for the solace of aesthetics in art or the natural world.

This weekend many Australians are cancelling holiday gathering plans. Reflective solitude will seem more appropriate.

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

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

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