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While Australia 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 feels, sadly, like no other.

It would be a dramatic understatement to describe the national temperament after the anti-Jewish violent assault on Australian Jews during Bondi Hanukah celebrations as one of simple 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 shock, grief and horror is segueing to fury and bitter division.

Those who had previously missed the frequently expressed fears of the Jewish community are now highly attuned. Just as, they are attuned to balancing the need for a far more urgent, energetic government and institutional fight against anti-Jewish hatred with the freedom to demonstrate against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a moment for a countrywide dialogue, it is now, when our faith in mankind is so sorely depleted. This is especially so for those of us lucky never to have endured the hatred and fear of faith-based persecution on this continent or elsewhere.

And yet the social media feeds keep spewing at us the trite instant opinions of those with blistering, divisive stances but no sense at all of that terrifying vulnerability.

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

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have witnessed such profound examples of human goodness. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The selflessness of bystanders. Emergency personnel – police officers and medical staff, those who ran towards the danger to aid others, some publicly hailed 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 solidarity was laudably promoted by faith leaders. It was a call of love and acceptance – of unifying rather than dividing in a time of antisemitic slaughter.

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

Togetherness, hope and compassion was the message of faith.

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

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

Some elected officials moved straight for the darkness, using tragedy as a calculating chance to challenge Australia’s immigration policies.

Observe the dangerous message of division from veteran agitators of Australian racial division, capitalizing on the massacre before the crime scene was even cold. Then read the statements of political figures while the probe was still active.

Government has a daunting task to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is grieving and scared and looking for the light and, not least, explanations to so many questions.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was assessed as likely, did such a significant open-air Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a grossly inadequate protection? Like how could the accused attackers have six guns in the family home when the domestic intelligence organisation has so openly and repeatedly warned of the threat of targeted attacks?

How rapidly we were subjected to that cliched line (or versions of it) that it’s people not weapons that kill. Of course, each point are true. It’s possible to at the same time seek new ways to stop violent bigotry and prevent guns away from its possible actors.

In this metropolis of immense beauty, of pristine blue heavens above sea and sand, the ocean and the coastline – our shared community spaces – may not seem entirely familiar again to the many who’ve noted that iconic Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s obscene bloodshed.

We yearn right now for comprehension and meaning, for family, and perhaps for the solace of aesthetics in art or nature.

This weekend many Australians are cancelling holiday gathering plans. Reflective solitude will seem more appropriate.

But this is perhaps counterintuitively counterintuitive. For in these times of fear, anger, sadness, bewilderment 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 tragically, all of the indicators are that unity in politics and society will be elusive this extended, draining summer.