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As the nation settles into for a traditional Christmas holiday across slow-moving days of coast and scorching heat accompanied by the soundtrack of Test cricket and insect sounds, this year the nation's summer atmosphere feels, unfortunately, like none before.

It would be a dramatic understatement to characterize the national temperament after the anti-Jewish violent assault on Jewish Australians during the beachside Hanukah festivities as one of simple 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 horror is segueing to fury and bitter polarization.

Those who had not picked up on the often voiced fears of the Jewish community are now highly attuned. Just as, they are attuned to balancing the need for a far more urgent, vigorous official fight against antisemitism with the freedom to demonstrate against genocide.

If ever there was a moment for a national listening, 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 hatred and fear of faith-based persecution on this continent or elsewhere.

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

This is a period when I regret not having a greater faith. I lament, because having faith in humanity – in mankind’s capacity for kindness – has let us down so painfully. Something else, something higher, is required.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have seen such profound examples of human decency. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The selflessness of bystanders. Emergency personnel – law enforcement and medical staff, those who charged into the gunfire to aid fellow humans, some publicly hailed but for the most part unnamed and unsung.

When the barrier cordon still waved wildly all about Bondi, the necessity of social, faith-based and cultural solidarity was admirably championed by religious figures. It was a call of compassion and acceptance – of unifying rather than splitting apart in a moment of antisemitic slaughter.

In keeping with the meaning of the Festival of Lights (light amid gloom), there was so much fitting evocation of the need for hope.

Togetherness, hope and compassion was the essence of belief.

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

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

Some politicians gravitated straight for the darkness, using the atrocity as a cynical opportunity to challenge Australia’s migration rules.

Observe the harmful message of division from veteran fomenters of societal discord, exploiting the massacre before the crime scene was even cold. Then consider the words of political figures while the investigation was still active.

Government has a daunting task to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is mourning and frightened and seeking the light and, importantly, explanations to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the official terror alert was judged as probable, did such a significant open-air Hanukah event go ahead with such a woefully insufficient security presence? Like how could the accused attackers have multiple firearms in the residence when the domestic intelligence organisation has so publicly and repeatedly warned of the threat of antisemitic violence?

How quickly we were treated to that cliched argument (or iterations of it) that it’s people not weapons that kill. Of course, each point are true. It’s possible to simultaneously seek new ways to stop violent bigotry and prevent guns away from its potential actors.

In this metropolis of profound splendor, of pristine azure skies above sea and sand, the water and the beaches – our communal areas – may not seem entirely familiar again to the many who’ve noted that iconic Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s obscene violence.

We yearn right now for comprehension and meaning, for family, and perhaps for the solace of aesthetics in art or nature.

This weekend many Australians are calling off Christmas party plans. Quiet contemplation will seem more appropriate.

But this is perhaps counterintuitively counterintuitive. For in these times of anxiety, outrage, melancholy, bewilderment 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 likely need most.

But sadly, all of the indicators are that cohesion in public life and the community will be hard to find this extended, enervating summer.