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As the nation winds down for a traditional Christmas holiday across languorous days of beach and blistering heat set to the soundtrack of sporting matches and insect sounds, this year the nation's summer atmosphere feels, unfortunately, like no other.

It would be a significant understatement to characterize the collective temperament after the antisemitic violent assault on Jewish Australians during Bondi Hanukah festivities as one of mere discontent.

Throughout the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of Australian cities – a tenor of initial shock, grief and terror is shifting to fury and deep polarization.

Those who had not picked up on the frequently expressed fears of Australian Jews are now acutely aware. Just as, they are attuned to reconciling the need for a much more immediate, energetic government and institutional crackdown against anti-Jewish hatred with the freedom to demonstrate against genocide.

If ever there was a moment for a countrywide dialogue, it is now, when our belief in mankind is so deeply depleted. This is particularly so for those of us lucky never to have endured the animosity and dread of religious and ethnic persecution on this land or elsewhere.

And yet the social media feeds keep spewing at us the trite hot takes of those with inflammatory, polarizing views but little understanding at all of that terrifying fragility.

This is a period when I lament not having a greater faith. I lament, because believing in humanity – in our capacity for compassion – has let us down so acutely. A different source, a greater power, is needed.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have witnessed such extreme instances of human decency. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The selflessness of bystanders. Emergency personnel – police officers and medical staff, those who ran towards the gunfire to help fellow humans, some recognised but for the most part unnamed and unheralded.

When the police tape still fluttered wildly all about Bondi, the imperative of social, faith-based and ethnic solidarity was admirably promoted by religious figures. It was a message of compassion and tolerance – of bringing together rather than dividing in a moment of antisemitic slaughter.

In keeping with the meaning of Hanukah (light amid darkness), there was so much appropriate reference of the need for lightness.

Unity, light and compassion was the message of faith.

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

And yet segments of the Australian polity reacted so nauseatingly quickly with division, finger-pointing and accusation.

Some elected officials gravitated straight for the darkness, using tragedy as a cynical opportunity to question Australia’s immigration policies.

Witness the harmful message of division from longstanding agitators of Australian racial division, capitalizing on the massacre before the crime scene was even cold. Then read the words of political figures while the investigation was still active.

Politics has a formidable job to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is grieving and frightened and seeking the hope and, importantly, answers to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the official terror alert was assessed as probable, did such a significant open-air Hanukah event go ahead with such a grossly insufficient security presence? Like how could the alleged killers have six guns in the residence when the security agency has so openly and repeatedly warned of the danger of antisemitic violence?

How rapidly we were subjected to that cliched line (or iterations 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 prevent hate-fuelled violence and prevent firearms away from its potential perpetrators.

In this metropolis of profound beauty, of pristine blue heavens above ocean and sand, the water and the coastline – our shared community spaces – may not look entirely familiar again to the multitude who’ve noted that famous Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s horrific bloodshed.

We long right now for comprehension and significance, for loved ones, and perhaps for the consolation of beauty in culture or the natural world.

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

But this is perhaps somewhat counterintuitive. For in these times of fear, anger, sadness, bewilderment and grief we require each other more than ever.

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

But tragically, all of the portents are that cohesion in politics and the community will be elusive this extended, draining summer.