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

It would be a significant understatement to characterize the collective temperament after the antisemitic violent assault on Australian Jews during Bondi Hanukah celebrations as one of mere discontent.

Throughout the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of the nation's urban centers – a tone of immediate shock, sorrow and terror is shifting to fury and deep division.

Those who had not picked up on the frequently expressed concerns of Australian Jews are now acutely aware. Just as, they are attuned to balancing the need for a much more immediate, energetic government and institutional crackdown against anti-Jewish hatred with the right to peacefully protest against genocide.

If ever there was a time for a national listening, it is now, when our faith in mankind is so deeply diminished. This is especially so for those of us lucky never to have experienced the hatred and dread of faith-based persecution on this land or elsewhere.

And yet the algorithms keep spewing at us the banal hot takes of those with inflammatory, divisive views but little understanding at all of that terrifying vulnerability.

This is a time when I lament not having a stronger faith. I mourn, because believing in people – in mankind’s potential for compassion – has failed us so painfully. Something else, a greater power, is needed.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have witnessed such profound instances of human goodness. The heroism of individuals. The selflessness of bystanders. Emergency personnel – law enforcement and medical staff, those who charged into the danger to help others, some recognised but for the most part unnamed and unheralded.

When the barrier cordon still fluttered wildly all about Bondi, the necessity of community, faith-based and ethnic solidarity was admirably promoted by religious figures. It was a message of compassion and acceptance – of unifying rather than splitting apart in a moment of antisemitic slaughter.

In keeping with the symbolism of the Festival of Lights (light amid gloom), there was so much appropriate reference of the need for hope.

Togetherness, hope and compassion was the message of faith.

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

And yet elements of the Australian polity reacted so nauseatingly swiftly with division, blame and accusation.

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

Observe the dangerous rhetoric of disunity from veteran fomenters of societal discord, exploiting the attack before the site was even cold. Then consider the words of leadership aspirants while the investigation was ongoing.

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

Like why, when the official terror alert was judged as probable, did such a significant open-air Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a woefully inadequate security presence? Like how could the accused attackers have six guns in the residence when the domestic intelligence organisation 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 individuals not weapons that cause death. Of course, both things are true. It’s possible to simultaneously seek new ways to stop violent bigotry and keep firearms away from its potential perpetrators.

In this metropolis of profound beauty, of pristine blue heavens above sea and sand, the ocean and the coastline – our shared community spaces – may not look entirely familiar again to the many who’ve noted that famous Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s horrific violence.

We long right now for understanding and significance, for family, and perhaps for the consolation of beauty in culture or the natural world.

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

But this is perhaps somewhat against instinct. For in these times of anxiety, anger, sadness, bewilderment and grief we need each other more than ever.

The reassurance of community – 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 public life and the community will be elusive this extended, draining summer.