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As Australia settles into for a traditional Christmas holiday during languorous days of coast and blistering heat set to the soundtrack of sporting matches and insect sounds, this year the country’s summer mood feels, sadly, like none before.

It would be a significant understatement to characterize the collective temperament after the anti-Jewish violent assault on Australian Jews during Bondi Hanukah festivities as one of mere discontent.

Across the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of the nation's urban centers – a tone of immediate surprise, sorrow and horror is segueing to anger and deep division.

Those who had previously missed the frequently expressed concerns of Australian Jews are now highly attuned. Similarly, they are sensitive to reconciling 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 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 fear of faith-based persecution on this continent or elsewhere.

And yet the algorithms keep churning out at us the banal instant opinions of those with blistering, polarizing stances but little understanding at all of that profound vulnerability.

This is a period when I lament not having a greater spiritual belief. I lament, because believing in humanity – in mankind’s capacity for kindness – has let us down so painfully. A different source, a greater power, is required.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have seen such extreme examples of human decency. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The bravery of those present. First responders – police officers and medical staff, those who ran towards the danger to help fellow humans, some recognised but for the most part unnamed and unheralded.

When the police tape still fluttered in the wind all about Bondi, the imperative of social, faith-based and cultural solidarity was admirably championed by religious figures. It was a message of compassion and tolerance – of bringing together rather than splitting apart in a moment of targeted violence.

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

Unity, light and love was the message of belief.

‘Our shared community spaces may not appear exactly as they did again.’

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

Some elected officials gravitated straight for the darkness, using tragedy as a cynical chance to challenge Australia’s migration rules.

Witness the dangerous rhetoric of division from longstanding fomenters of Australian racial division, capitalizing on the attack before the site was even cold. Then read the statements of leadership aspirants while the probe was still active.

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

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was judged as probable, did such a large open-air Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a grossly inadequate security presence? Like how could the alleged killers have multiple firearms in the family home when the domestic intelligence organisation has so publicly and consistently alerted of the danger of targeted attacks?

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

In this city of profound splendor, of clear blue heavens above ocean and sand, the water and the coastline – our shared community spaces – may not seem entirely familiar again to the multitude who’ve observed that iconic Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s obscene bloodshed.

We yearn right now for comprehension and significance, for loved ones, and perhaps for the solace of aesthetics in culture or the natural world.

This weekend many Australians are calling off holiday gathering plans. Reflective solitude will feel more appropriate.

But this is perhaps somewhat against instinct. For in these times of fear, outrage, sadness, bewilderment and grief we require each other now more than ever.

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

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