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As the nation winds down for a traditional Christmas holiday across languorous days of beach and scorching heat set to the soundtrack of Test cricket and insect sounds, this year the country’s summer atmosphere seems, unfortunately, like none before.

It would be a significant understatement to characterize the national temperament after the antisemitic violent assault on Jewish Australians during Bondi Hanukah celebrations as one of simple ennui.

Across the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of the nation's urban centers – a tone of immediate shock, sorrow and terror is shifting to anger and bitter polarization.

Those who had previously missed the often voiced fears of Australian Jews are now acutely aware. Similarly, they are attuned to reconciling the need for a far more urgent, vigorous government and institutional crackdown against anti-Jewish hatred with the right to peacefully protest against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a time for a national listening, it is now, when our belief in mankind is so deeply depleted. This is particularly so for those of us fortunate enough never to have experienced the hatred and dread of religious and ethnic persecution on this continent or anywhere else.

And yet the algorithms keep spewing at us the trite instant opinions of those with inflammatory, divisive stances but no sense at all of that terrifying fragility.

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

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have seen such extreme instances of human goodness. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The selflessness of bystanders. Emergency personnel – police officers and paramedics, those who ran towards the gunfire to aid others, some publicly hailed but for the most part unnamed and unheralded.

When the police tape still waved wildly all about Bondi, the necessity of community, faith-based and ethnic unity was laudably championed by faith leaders. It was a call of love and acceptance – of bringing together rather than dividing in a moment of antisemitic slaughter.

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

Togetherness, hope 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 recrimination.

Some elected officials gravitated straight for the darkness, using the atrocity as a cynical chance to challenge Australia’s immigration policies.

Witness the harmful message of division from longstanding fomenters of societal discord, exploiting the massacre before the crime scene was even cold. Then read the words of political figures while the investigation was ongoing.

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

Like why, when the official terror alert was judged as likely, did such a significant open-air Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a woefully insufficient protection? Like how could the accused attackers have multiple firearms in the family home when the domestic intelligence organisation has so publicly and repeatedly warned of the danger of antisemitic violence?

How rapidly we were treated to that tired line (or iterations of it) that it’s people not guns that cause death. Of course, both things are valid. It’s possible to simultaneously pursue new ways to prevent violent bigotry and prevent guns away from its potential perpetrators.

In this city of immense splendor, of pristine blue heavens above ocean and shore, the water and the beaches – our shared community spaces – may not look entirely familiar again to the multitude who’ve observed that iconic Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s obscene bloodshed.

We yearn right now for understanding and meaning, for family, and perhaps for the solace of beauty in culture or the natural world.

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

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

The reassurance of community – the binding force 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 hard to find this extended, draining summer.