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While the nation settles into for a traditional Christmas holiday during slow-moving days of beach and blistering heat set to the background of Test cricket 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 antisemitic violent assault on Jewish Australians during Bondi Hanukah celebrations as one of mere ennui.

Across the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of the nation's urban centers – a tenor of initial surprise, grief and terror is segueing to fury and deep division.

Those who had not picked up on the frequently expressed fears of Australian Jews are now highly attuned. Similarly, they are attuned to reconciling the need for a far more urgent, vigorous official crackdown against antisemitism with the right to peacefully protest against genocide.

If ever there was a time for a countrywide dialogue, it is now, when our faith in humanity is so sorely depleted. This is particularly so for those of us lucky never to have experienced the animosity and dread of religious and ethnic targeting on this land or elsewhere.

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

This is a period when I regret not having a greater faith. I lament, because having faith in people – in mankind’s potential for kindness – has let us down so acutely. Something else, something higher, is needed.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have witnessed such extreme examples of human goodness. The heroism of individuals. The selflessness of bystanders. Emergency personnel – law enforcement and medical staff, those who charged into the gunfire to aid fellow humans, some recognised but for the most part anonymous and unheralded.

When the police tape still fluttered in the wind all about Bondi, the imperative of community, religious and ethnic solidarity was laudably promoted by religious figures. It was a call of compassion and tolerance – of bringing together rather than dividing in a time of targeted violence.

Consistent with the symbolism of Hanukah (illumination amid gloom), there was so much appropriate evocation of the need for lightness.

Togetherness, light and love was the message of faith.

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

And yet segments of the political landscape reacted so disgustingly quickly with division, finger-pointing and recrimination.

Some politicians gravitated straight for the pessimism, using tragedy as a cynical opportunity to question Australia’s migration rules.

Observe the dangerous rhetoric of division from longstanding fomenters of societal discord, exploiting the massacre before the crime scene was even cold. Then read the statements of political figures while the investigation was ongoing.

Government has a formidable task to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is mourning and scared and looking for the light and, importantly, answers to so many questions.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was judged as likely, did such a significant open-air Hanukah event go ahead with such a woefully insufficient protection? Like how could the accused attackers have multiple firearms in the residence when the security agency has so publicly and repeatedly warned of the threat of antisemitic violence?

How rapidly we were treated to that cliched line (or versions of it) that it’s people not weapons that kill. Of course, both things are true. It’s feasible to simultaneously pursue new ways to prevent violent bigotry and keep firearms away from its possible actors.

In this city of profound beauty, of pristine azure skies above sea and sand, the water and the beaches – our shared community spaces – 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 horrific violence.

We long right now for comprehension and meaning, for loved ones, and perhaps for the solace of beauty in art or the natural world.

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

But this is perhaps counterintuitively against instinct. For in these days of fear, outrage, sadness, confusion and loss we require each other more than ever.

The comfort of community – the human glue of the unity in the very word – is what we probably need most.

But sadly, all of the portents are that cohesion in public life and the community will be elusive this long, enervating summer.