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While the nation winds down for a customary Christmas holiday across slow-moving days of coast and scorching heat accompanied by the background of sporting matches and insect sounds, this year the nation's summer atmosphere feels, unfortunately, like no other.

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

Across the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of Australian cities – a tenor of immediate surprise, sorrow and horror is shifting to fury and deep polarization.

Those who had not picked up on the frequently expressed concerns of the Jewish community are now acutely aware. Similarly, they are attuned to reconciling the need for a far more urgent, vigorous government and institutional fight 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 mankind is so deeply depleted. This is particularly so for those of us fortunate enough never to have experienced the animosity and fear of religious and ethnic persecution on this land or elsewhere.

And yet the social media feeds keep spewing at us the banal hot takes of those with blistering, polarizing views but no sense at all of that terrifying vulnerability.

This is a time when I lament not having a greater spiritual belief. I lament, because believing in humanity – in mankind’s potential for compassion – has let us down so acutely. Something else, a greater power, is required.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have witnessed such profound examples of human decency. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The bravery of those present. First responders – law enforcement and medical staff, those who ran towards the danger to help others, some recognised but for the most part anonymous and unsung.

When the barrier cordon still fluttered in the wind all about Bondi, the necessity of social, faith-based and ethnic unity was laudably promoted by religious figures. It was a message of compassion and tolerance – of bringing together rather than dividing in a time of targeted violence.

Consistent with the symbolism of Hanukah (light amid darkness), there was so much fitting evocation of the need for lightness.

Togetherness, light and compassion was the essence of faith.

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

And yet elements of the political landscape responded so nauseatingly quickly with division, finger-pointing and recrimination.

Some politicians gravitated straight for the darkness, using the atrocity as a calculating chance to challenge Australia’s migration rules.

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

Politics has a formidable job to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is mourning and frightened and seeking the hope and, importantly, explanations to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was judged as likely, did such a large public Hanukah event go ahead with such a grossly insufficient protection? Like how could the alleged killers have six guns in the residence when the security agency has so openly and repeatedly warned of the danger of targeted attacks?

How quickly we were treated to that tired argument (or iterations of it) that it’s people not guns that cause death. Naturally, both things are valid. It’s possible to at the same time seek new ways to prevent hate-fuelled violence and keep firearms away from its possible perpetrators.

In this metropolis of profound beauty, of pristine azure skies above ocean and shore, the water and the beaches – our shared community spaces – may not seem entirely familiar again to the many who’ve observed that famous Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s obscene violence.

We long right now for comprehension and meaning, for loved ones, and perhaps for the consolation of aesthetics in culture or nature.

This weekend many Australians are calling off Christmas party plans. Quiet contemplation will feel more in order.

But this is perhaps somewhat counterintuitive. For in these times of anxiety, outrage, melancholy, confusion and loss we require each other more than ever.

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

But sadly, all of the indicators are that unity in public life and society will be hard to find this long, draining summer.