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While Australia winds down for a customary Christmas holiday across languorous days of beach and blistering heat set to the soundtrack of Test cricket and cicada song, this year the country’s summer mood feels, sadly, like none before.

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

Across the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of the nation's urban centers – a tenor of immediate shock, grief and horror is segueing to fury and deep division.

Those who had previously missed the frequently expressed concerns of Australian Jews are now acutely aware. Similarly, they are attuned to balancing the need for a much more immediate, vigorous government and institutional crackdown 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 deeply depleted. This is particularly so for those of us lucky never to have experienced the hatred and dread of religious and ethnic persecution on this continent or elsewhere.

And yet the social media feeds keep spewing at us the trite hot takes of those with inflammatory, polarizing stances but no sense at all of that profound fragility.

This is a time when I regret not having a greater spiritual belief. I mourn, because having faith in humanity – in mankind’s potential for compassion – has let us down so painfully. Something else, a greater power, is needed.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have witnessed such extreme instances of human decency. The heroism of individuals. The selflessness of bystanders. First responders – law enforcement and paramedics, those who charged into the danger to help others, some publicly hailed but for the most part anonymous and unheralded.

When the barrier cordon still fluttered wildly all about Bondi, the necessity of community, faith-based and cultural solidarity was laudably promoted by faith leaders. It was a call of love and tolerance – of unifying rather than dividing in a time of antisemitic slaughter.

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

Togetherness, light and compassion was the message of belief.

‘Our public places may not look quite the same again.’

And yet segments of the Australian polity responded so nauseatingly swiftly with fragmentation, finger-pointing and accusation.

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

Witness the dangerous rhetoric of division from veteran agitators of Australian racial division, capitalizing on the massacre before the site was even cold. Then read the statements of leadership aspirants while the investigation was still active.

Government has a daunting job to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is grieving and scared and looking for the light and, not least, explanations to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was assessed as likely, did such a significant public Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a woefully inadequate protection? Like how could the accused attackers have six guns in the family home when the domestic intelligence organisation has so publicly and repeatedly warned of the threat of antisemitic violence?

How rapidly we were subjected to that cliched argument (or versions of it) that it’s people not guns that cause death. Of course, each point are valid. It’s feasible to at the same time seek new ways to prevent hate-fuelled violence and keep firearms away from its potential actors.

In this metropolis of profound beauty, of clear azure skies above ocean and shore, the ocean and the coastline – our shared community spaces – may not seem quite the same again to the many who’ve noted that famous Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s horrific bloodshed.

We long right now for understanding and significance, for family, and perhaps for the consolation of aesthetics in art or nature.

This weekend many Australians are calling off holiday gathering plans. Reflective solitude will feel more appropriate.

But this is perhaps somewhat counterintuitive. For in these days of fear, outrage, melancholy, bewilderment and grief we need each other now more than ever.

The comfort of togetherness – 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 politics and society will be elusive this long, draining summer.