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As Australia winds down for a customary Christmas holiday across slow-moving days of coast and blistering heat set to the background of Test cricket and cicada song, this year the country’s summer mood seems, unfortunately, like no other.

It would be a significant understatement to describe the collective disposition after the anti-Jewish violent assault on Australian Jews during Bondi Hanukah celebrations as one of mere ennui.

Throughout the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of the nation's urban centers – a tenor of immediate surprise, sorrow and terror is segueing to anger and bitter 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 far more urgent, energetic official fight against anti-Jewish hatred with the right to peacefully protest against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a moment for a national listening, it is now, when our faith in mankind is so deeply diminished. This is especially so for those of us lucky never to have experienced the hatred and fear of religious and ethnic targeting on this continent or anywhere else.

And yet the social media feeds keep churning out at us the banal hot takes of those with blistering, divisive stances but little understanding at all of that terrifying vulnerability.

This is a time when I lament not having a stronger faith. I mourn, because having faith in humanity – in our potential for compassion – has let us down so painfully. Something else, a greater power, is needed.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have seen such profound instances of human goodness. The heroism of individuals. The selflessness of bystanders. Emergency personnel – police officers and medical staff, those who charged into the gunfire to aid others, some recognised but for the most part unnamed and unsung.

When the barrier cordon still waved in the wind all about Bondi, the necessity of social, religious and ethnic unity was admirably championed by faith leaders. It was a call of compassion and acceptance – of unifying rather than splitting apart in a time of antisemitic slaughter.

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

Togetherness, hope and compassion was the message of faith.

‘Our public places may not look exactly as they did again.’

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

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

Observe the dangerous message of disunity from longstanding agitators of Australian racial division, exploiting the attack before the crime scene was even cold. Then consider the words of political figures while the probe was still active.

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

Like why, when the official terror alert was judged as likely, did such a significant open-air Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a grossly inadequate security presence? Like how could the accused attackers have six guns in the residence when the security agency has so publicly and consistently alerted of the danger of targeted attacks?

How rapidly we were treated to that cliched line (or iterations of it) that it’s individuals not weapons that cause death. Of course, both things are true. It’s possible to at the same time pursue new ways to stop violent bigotry and keep firearms away from its potential actors.

In this metropolis of immense beauty, of pristine azure skies above ocean and shore, the water and the beaches – our communal areas – may not seem entirely familiar again to the many who’ve observed that famous Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s horrific bloodshed.

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

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

But this is perhaps counterintuitively against instinct. For in these times of fear, outrage, sadness, confusion and loss we need each other more than ever.

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

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