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While the nation winds down for a customary Christmas holiday across languorous days of coast and blistering heat set to the soundtrack of Test cricket and insect sounds, this year the nation's summer atmosphere feels, sadly, like none before.

It would be a significant understatement to describe the national temperament after the anti-Jewish violent assault on Jewish Australians 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 tenor of initial shock, grief and terror is shifting to fury and bitter division.

Those who had not picked up on the frequently expressed fears of Australian Jews are now acutely aware. Similarly, they are attuned to balancing the need for a much more immediate, vigorous government and institutional fight against anti-Jewish hatred with the right to demonstrate against genocide.

If ever there was a time for a countrywide dialogue, it is now, when our belief in humanity is so deeply diminished. This is particularly so for those of us fortunate enough never to have endured the hatred and fear of religious and ethnic targeting on this land or anywhere else.

And yet the algorithms keep spewing at us the trite hot takes of those with inflammatory, divisive views but no sense at all of that profound vulnerability.

This is a period when I regret not having a greater faith. I mourn, because believing in people – in our capacity for kindness – has failed us so acutely. A different source, a greater power, is required.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have witnessed such profound instances of human decency. The heroism of individuals. The bravery of those present. Emergency personnel – police officers and medical staff, those who charged into the danger to help fellow humans, some recognised but for the most part anonymous and unsung.

When the police tape still fluttered in the wind all about Bondi, the necessity of social, faith-based and cultural solidarity was laudably championed by religious figures. It was a call of love and acceptance – of unifying rather than splitting apart in a time of antisemitic slaughter.

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

Togetherness, hope and compassion was the essence of faith.

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

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

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

Observe the dangerous rhetoric of disunity from veteran fomenters of Australian racial division, exploiting the attack before the site was even cold. Then consider the words of leadership aspirants while the probe was still active.

Politics has a daunting job to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is mourning and scared and looking for the hope and, importantly, answers to so many questions.

Like why, when the official terror alert was assessed as probable, did such a significant open-air Hanukah celebration 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 repeatedly alerted of the danger of antisemitic violence?

How quickly we were treated to that cliched argument (or iterations of it) that it’s individuals not weapons that cause death. Naturally, each point are valid. It’s possible to at the same time pursue new ways to prevent violent bigotry and keep guns away from its possible actors.

In this metropolis of immense splendor, of clear blue heavens above sea and shore, the ocean and the coastline – our shared community spaces – may not seem entirely familiar again to the multitude who’ve noted that iconic Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s horrific bloodshed.

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

This weekend many Australians are calling off Christmas party plans. Reflective solitude will seem more in order.

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

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

But sadly, all of the portents are that unity in public life and society will be elusive this extended, enervating summer.