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As the nation settles into for a traditional Christmas holiday across slow-moving days of beach and scorching heat accompanied by the soundtrack of sporting matches and cicada song, this year the nation's summer atmosphere seems, unfortunately, like no other.

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

Across the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of the nation's urban centers – a tenor of initial surprise, grief and terror is shifting to anger and deep division.

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

If ever there was a time for a national listening, it is now, when our belief in mankind is so deeply depleted. This is especially so for those of us lucky never to have experienced the animosity and fear of faith-based targeting on this land or elsewhere.

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

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

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have witnessed such profound instances of human decency. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The bravery of those present. Emergency personnel – police officers and medical staff, those who charged into the danger to aid fellow humans, some recognised but for the most part unnamed and unsung.

When the police tape still waved in the wind all about Bondi, the necessity of social, religious and cultural solidarity was laudably championed by religious figures. It was a call of love and acceptance – of bringing together rather than dividing in a time of antisemitic slaughter.

Consistent with the symbolism of Hanukah (illumination amid darkness), there was so much fitting evocation of the need for hope.

Togetherness, light and love was the message of faith.

‘Our shared community spaces may not look quite the same again.’

And yet segments of the political landscape responded so disgustingly swiftly with fragmentation, blame and recrimination.

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

Witness the harmful message of division from veteran agitators of Australian racial division, exploiting the massacre before the site was even cold. Then consider the statements of leadership aspirants while the probe was still active.

Politics has a daunting task to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is grieving and scared and seeking the hope and, importantly, explanations to so many questions.

Like why, when the official terror alert was judged as probable, did such a large open-air Hanukah event go ahead with such a woefully insufficient protection? Like how could the accused attackers have six guns in the family home when the security agency has so publicly and repeatedly warned of the threat of targeted attacks?

How quickly we were subjected to that cliched argument (or iterations of it) that it’s people not weapons that kill. Naturally, each point are true. It’s feasible to simultaneously seek new ways to stop hate-fuelled violence and prevent firearms away from its possible perpetrators.

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

We yearn right now for understanding and significance, for loved ones, and perhaps for the solace of aesthetics in culture or nature.

This weekend many Australians are calling off Christmas party plans. Reflective solitude will feel more in order.

But this is perhaps somewhat against instinct. For in these times of fear, anger, melancholy, confusion and loss we need 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 portents are that cohesion in public life and society will be hard to find this long, enervating summer.