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While Australia winds down for a traditional Christmas holiday during languorous days of beach and scorching heat accompanied by the background of sporting matches and cicada song, this year the nation's summer mood feels, unfortunately, like no other.

It would be a dramatic oversimplification to characterize the collective temperament after the anti-Jewish violent assault on Jewish Australians during Bondi Hanukah festivities as one of simple ennui.

Across the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of Australian cities – a tone of initial shock, grief and horror is segueing to fury and deep polarization.

Those who had not picked up on the often voiced concerns of Australian Jews are now highly attuned. Just as, they are sensitive to reconciling the need for a much more immediate, energetic official crackdown against anti-Jewish hatred with the freedom to peacefully protest against genocide.

If ever there was a moment for a national listening, it is now, when our faith in humanity is so deeply diminished. This is particularly so for those of us fortunate enough never to have experienced the hatred and fear of faith-based targeting on this land or elsewhere.

And yet the social media feeds keep churning out at us the banal instant opinions of those with blistering, polarizing views but no sense at all of that profound vulnerability.

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

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have seen such profound examples of human goodness. The heroism of individuals. The bravery of those present. First responders – law enforcement and medical staff, those who ran towards the danger to aid others, some recognised but for the most part anonymous and unsung.

When the police tape still fluttered wildly all about Bondi, the necessity of social, faith-based and cultural unity was laudably championed by faith leaders. It was a call of compassion and tolerance – of unifying rather than dividing in a time of antisemitic slaughter.

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

Unity, light and love was the essence of belief.

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

And yet segments of the Australian polity reacted so nauseatingly quickly with division, blame and recrimination.

Some politicians moved straight for the darkness, using the atrocity as a calculating chance to question Australia’s immigration policies.

Observe the harmful rhetoric of division from longstanding fomenters of Australian racial division, capitalizing on the massacre before the site was even cold. Then read the words of political figures while the investigation was still active.

Politics has a formidable task to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is grieving and scared and looking for the hope and, importantly, answers to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was judged as likely, did such a large public 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 quickly we were treated to that tired line (or iterations of it) that it’s people not guns that kill. Naturally, each point are true. It’s feasible to at the same time pursue new ways to stop hate-fuelled violence and prevent firearms away from its potential actors.

In this metropolis of profound splendor, of clear azure skies above sea and shore, the ocean and the beaches – 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 family, and perhaps for the solace of beauty in culture or the natural world.

This weekend many Australians are calling off holiday gathering plans. Quiet contemplation will seem more appropriate.

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

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

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