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While the nation settles into for a customary Christmas holiday during slow-moving days of coast and scorching heat set to the background of Test cricket and cicada song, this year the country’s summer mood feels, unfortunately, like none before.

It would be a significant understatement to characterize the collective disposition after the anti-Jewish violent assault on Jewish Australians during Bondi Hanukah festivities as one of mere ennui.

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

Those who had not picked up on the frequently expressed concerns of the Jewish community are now highly attuned. Similarly, they are sensitive to balancing the need for a much more immediate, vigorous official fight against antisemitism with the freedom to demonstrate against mass atrocities.

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

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

This is a period when I regret not having a greater spiritual belief. I mourn, because having faith in people – in mankind’s capacity for kindness – has let us down so acutely. A different source, something higher, is required.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have seen such extreme examples of human decency. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The selflessness of bystanders. First responders – law enforcement and paramedics, those who charged into the danger to help others, some recognised but for the most part unnamed and unsung.

When the barrier cordon still fluttered wildly all about Bondi, the imperative of social, faith-based and ethnic solidarity was laudably promoted by faith leaders. It was a call of love and acceptance – of unifying rather than splitting apart in a time of antisemitic slaughter.

Consistent with the meaning of the Festival of Lights (light amid darkness), there was so much appropriate evocation of the need for lightness.

Unity, hope and love was the essence of faith.

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

And yet elements of the political landscape responded so disgustingly quickly with fragmentation, blame and accusation.

Some politicians moved straight for the darkness, using the atrocity as a calculating chance to challenge Australia’s migration rules.

Witness the harmful rhetoric of division from veteran agitators of Australian racial division, exploiting the massacre before the crime scene was even cold. Then consider the words of leadership aspirants while the investigation was ongoing.

Government 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, not least, answers to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was assessed as probable, did such a large public Hanukah event go ahead with such a grossly insufficient protection? Like how could the alleged killers have six guns in the residence when the domestic intelligence organisation has so publicly and repeatedly alerted of the danger of targeted attacks?

How rapidly we were treated to that tired argument (or versions of it) that it’s people not guns that cause death. Naturally, both things are true. It’s feasible to simultaneously pursue new ways to stop hate-fuelled violence and keep guns away from its potential actors.

In this metropolis of profound splendor, of pristine azure skies above ocean 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 jarringly out of place with last weekend’s horrific bloodshed.

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

This weekend many Australians are cancelling Christmas party plans. Quiet contemplation will seem more in order.

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

The comfort of community – the human glue of the unity in the very word – is what we probably need most.

But sadly, all of the portents are that unity in politics and the community will be hard to find this long, enervating summer.