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As Australia settles into for a traditional Christmas holiday across languorous days of beach and scorching heat accompanied by 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 national temperament after the anti-Jewish violent assault on Australian Jews during the beachside Hanukah festivities as one of mere ennui.

Across the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of the nation's urban centers – a tenor of immediate shock, grief and terror is shifting to anger and deep polarization.

Those who had previously missed the often voiced fears of the Jewish community are now acutely aware. Just as, they are sensitive to reconciling the need for a much more immediate, vigorous government and institutional crackdown against antisemitism with the right to peacefully protest 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 especially so for those of us fortunate enough never to have endured the hatred and dread of faith-based persecution on this land or elsewhere.

And yet the algorithms keep spewing at us the trite hot takes of those with inflammatory, polarizing views but no sense at all of that terrifying fragility.

This is a period when I lament not having a greater spiritual belief. I lament, because having faith in people – in mankind’s potential for compassion – has let us down so acutely. Something else, a greater power, is needed.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have seen such extreme examples of human decency. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The bravery of those present. First responders – law enforcement and paramedics, those who charged into the gunfire to aid fellow humans, some publicly hailed but for the most part anonymous and unheralded.

When the barrier cordon still fluttered in the wind all about Bondi, the imperative of community, religious and ethnic solidarity was laudably championed by faith leaders. It was a message of love and tolerance – of unifying rather than splitting apart in a moment of antisemitic slaughter.

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

Unity, hope and love was the essence of faith.

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

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

Some politicians gravitated straight for the darkness, using tragedy as a calculating chance to challenge Australia’s immigration policies.

Observe the harmful rhetoric of division from veteran agitators of societal discord, exploiting the massacre before the crime scene was even cold. Then consider the words of political figures while the probe was still active.

Politics has a formidable task to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is grieving and frightened and looking for the light and, importantly, explanations to so many questions.

Like why, when the official terror alert was assessed as probable, did such a large open-air Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a woefully inadequate protection? Like how could the accused attackers have six guns in the family home when the domestic intelligence organisation has so publicly and consistently alerted of the threat of targeted attacks?

How rapidly we were subjected to that cliched line (or versions of it) that it’s people not weapons that cause death. Naturally, both things are true. It’s feasible to at the same time seek new ways to prevent violent bigotry and prevent guns away from its potential perpetrators.

In this metropolis of profound beauty, of pristine blue heavens above sea and sand, the water and the beaches – our communal areas – may not seem entirely familiar again to the many who’ve observed that iconic Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s obscene violence.

We yearn right now for comprehension and meaning, for family, and perhaps for the consolation of aesthetics in culture or the natural world.

This weekend many Australians are calling off holiday gathering plans. Reflective solitude will seem more in order.

But this is perhaps somewhat counterintuitive. For in these days of anxiety, outrage, melancholy, bewilderment and grief we require each other more than ever.

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

But tragically, all of the portents are that cohesion in politics and the community will be hard to find this long, draining summer.