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While the nation settles into for a customary Christmas holiday across languorous days of beach and blistering heat set to the soundtrack of Test cricket and insect sounds, this year the country’s summer atmosphere seems, unfortunately, like no other.

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

Throughout the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of the nation's urban centers – a tone of immediate shock, grief and horror is segueing to fury and bitter polarization.

Those who had previously missed the often voiced fears of Australian Jews are now highly attuned. Just as, they are sensitive to reconciling the need for a far more urgent, vigorous official crackdown against antisemitism with the freedom to demonstrate against genocide.

If ever there was a time for a national listening, it is now, when our belief in humanity is so sorely diminished. This is particularly so for those of us lucky never to have experienced the animosity and dread of religious and ethnic persecution on this continent or elsewhere.

And yet the algorithms keep churning out at us the banal hot takes of those with blistering, divisive stances but no sense at all of that terrifying fragility.

This is a period when I regret not having a greater spiritual belief. I mourn, because having faith in people – in our capacity for kindness – has failed us so acutely. A different source, something higher, is needed.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have witnessed such extreme examples of human goodness. The heroism of individuals. The selflessness of bystanders. First responders – law enforcement and paramedics, those who charged into the gunfire to help fellow humans, some recognised but for the most part unnamed and unheralded.

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

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

Togetherness, light and compassion was the essence of belief.

‘Our shared community spaces may not appear quite the same again.’

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

Some elected officials moved straight for the pessimism, using the atrocity as a calculating opportunity to challenge Australia’s immigration policies.

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

Government has a formidable job to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is grieving and frightened and looking for the hope and, importantly, answers to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was judged as probable, did such a significant public Hanukah event go ahead with such a grossly insufficient security presence? Like how could the alleged killers have multiple firearms in the family home when the security agency has so publicly and consistently warned of the threat of targeted attacks?

How quickly we were treated to that cliched line (or versions of it) that it’s people not weapons that cause death. Naturally, each point are true. It’s possible to at the same time seek new ways to prevent hate-fuelled violence and prevent guns away from its potential actors.

In this metropolis of profound beauty, of pristine blue heavens above sea and shore, the ocean and the coastline – our shared community spaces – may not look quite the same again to the many who’ve noted that iconic 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 aesthetics in culture or the natural world.

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

But this is perhaps counterintuitively counterintuitive. For in these days of anxiety, anger, melancholy, confusion and grief we need each other more than ever.

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

But tragically, all of the indicators are that cohesion in public life and society will be elusive this long, draining summer.