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While the nation winds down for a traditional Christmas holiday during languorous days of beach and blistering heat accompanied by the background of Test cricket and insect sounds, this year the country’s summer atmosphere seems, sadly, like no other.

It would be a significant oversimplification to characterize the collective disposition after the antisemitic violent assault on Australian Jews during the beachside 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 tenor of immediate shock, grief and horror is shifting to anger and bitter division.

Those who had not picked up on the frequently expressed fears of the Jewish community are now highly attuned. Just as, they are attuned to reconciling the need for a much more immediate, vigorous official fight against antisemitism with the right to demonstrate against genocide.

If ever there was a moment for a countrywide dialogue, it is now, when our faith in mankind is so sorely diminished. This is particularly so for those of us lucky never to have experienced the hatred and fear of religious and ethnic targeting on this continent or elsewhere.

And yet the algorithms keep churning out at us the trite hot takes of those with blistering, divisive views but little understanding at all of that terrifying fragility.

This is a time when I lament not having a greater faith. I mourn, because believing in people – in mankind’s capacity for compassion – has let us down so acutely. A different source, something higher, is needed.

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

When the police tape still fluttered in the wind all about Bondi, the necessity of community, religious and cultural unity was laudably promoted by religious figures. It was a message of compassion and acceptance – of bringing together rather than dividing in a moment of antisemitic slaughter.

In keeping with the meaning of the Festival of Lights (illumination amid darkness), there was so much fitting evocation of the need for lightness.

Unity, hope and love was the essence of belief.

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

And yet elements of the political landscape reacted so disgustingly swiftly with fragmentation, finger-pointing and recrimination.

Some politicians moved straight for the darkness, using the atrocity as a cynical chance to question Australia’s immigration policies.

Observe the harmful message of disunity from longstanding agitators of societal discord, exploiting the massacre before the site was even cold. Then read the statements of political figures while the investigation was still active.

Politics has a formidable job to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is grieving and frightened and seeking the hope and, not least, answers to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the official terror alert was assessed as probable, did such a significant open-air Hanukah event go ahead with such a woefully insufficient protection? Like how could the alleged killers have multiple firearms in the residence when the domestic intelligence organisation has so openly and consistently warned of the danger of targeted attacks?

How rapidly we were treated to that tired argument (or versions of it) that it’s individuals not guns that kill. Of course, both things are true. It’s feasible to simultaneously seek new ways to stop violent bigotry and keep firearms away from its possible actors.

In this city of immense beauty, of pristine blue heavens above sea and shore, the water and the beaches – our shared community spaces – may not seem entirely familiar again to the many who’ve noted that iconic Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s horrific violence.

We long right now for understanding and significance, for family, and perhaps for the solace of aesthetics in art or the natural world.

This weekend many Australians are calling off Christmas party plans. Quiet contemplation will seem more appropriate.

But this is perhaps somewhat against instinct. For in these days of anxiety, outrage, melancholy, confusion and loss we need each other now 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 cohesion in politics and the community will be elusive this extended, draining summer.