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As the nation settles into for a customary Christmas holiday across languorous days of beach and blistering heat set to the background of sporting matches and cicada song, this year the nation's summer mood feels, unfortunately, like no other.

It would be a dramatic oversimplification to describe the collective temperament after the anti-Jewish violent assault on Australian Jews during Bondi Hanukah celebrations as one of mere discontent.

Throughout the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of the nation's urban centers – a tone of immediate shock, grief and terror is shifting to anger and bitter polarization.

Those who had previously missed the frequently expressed fears of Australian Jews are now acutely aware. Similarly, they are attuned to balancing the need for a far more urgent, vigorous official crackdown against antisemitism with the right to demonstrate against genocide.

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 lucky never to have endured the animosity and fear of faith-based persecution on this continent or anywhere else.

And yet the social media feeds keep churning out at us the trite hot takes of those with inflammatory, polarizing views but no sense at all of that profound vulnerability.

This is a time when I regret not having a stronger faith. I mourn, because believing in people – in our potential for kindness – has failed us so acutely. A different source, a greater power, is needed.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have seen such profound examples of human goodness. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The selflessness of bystanders. Emergency personnel – law enforcement and medical staff, those who ran towards the gunfire to aid fellow humans, some publicly hailed but for the most part anonymous and unsung.

When the barrier cordon still waved wildly all about Bondi, the necessity of community, religious and cultural solidarity was admirably championed by religious figures. It was a call of love and tolerance – of unifying rather than dividing in a moment of antisemitic slaughter.

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

Unity, light and love was the essence of belief.

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

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

Some politicians gravitated straight for the pessimism, using tragedy as a cynical opportunity to question Australia’s immigration policies.

Observe the harmful rhetoric of disunity from longstanding fomenters of Australian racial division, exploiting the attack before the site was even cold. Then read the statements of political figures while the investigation was ongoing.

Politics has a daunting job to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is mourning and frightened and seeking the light and, not least, explanations to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the official terror alert was assessed as likely, did such a large public Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a grossly inadequate protection? Like how could the accused attackers have six guns in the residence when the domestic intelligence organisation has so publicly and consistently alerted of the danger of targeted attacks?

How quickly we were subjected to that cliched argument (or iterations of it) that it’s individuals not weapons that cause death. Of course, each point are true. It’s possible to at the same time pursue new ways to stop violent bigotry and prevent guns away from its possible actors.

In this metropolis of immense beauty, of clear blue heavens above sea and shore, the water and the coastline – our communal areas – may not look entirely familiar again to the many who’ve noted that famous Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s obscene violence.

We long 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 holiday gathering plans. Quiet contemplation will seem more appropriate.

But this is perhaps counterintuitively counterintuitive. For in these days of anxiety, anger, sadness, bewilderment and loss we require each other more than ever.

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

But sadly, all of the portents are that unity in politics and society will be hard to find this long, enervating summer.