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As the nation settles into for a customary Christmas holiday during slow-moving days of coast and blistering heat set to the soundtrack of sporting matches and insect sounds, this year the country’s summer mood feels, unfortunately, like no other.

It would be a significant oversimplification to characterize the national disposition after the antisemitic violent assault on Jewish Australians during Bondi Hanukah celebrations as one of mere discontent.

Throughout the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of the nation's urban centers – a tenor of initial shock, sorrow and terror is segueing to anger and bitter division.

Those who had previously missed the often voiced fears of the Jewish community are now highly attuned. Just as, they are sensitive to reconciling the need for a much more immediate, vigorous government and institutional crackdown against antisemitism with the right to demonstrate against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a time for a national listening, it is now, when our faith in humanity is so sorely diminished. This is especially so for those of us lucky never to have experienced the animosity and dread of faith-based targeting on this land or anywhere else.

And yet the algorithms keep churning out at us the trite hot takes of those with inflammatory, polarizing views but no sense at all of that terrifying fragility.

This is a period when I lament not having a stronger spiritual belief. I mourn, because believing in humanity – in our potential for kindness – has let us down so painfully. A different source, something higher, is required.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have witnessed such extreme examples of human decency. The heroism of individuals. The selflessness of bystanders. Emergency personnel – police officers and paramedics, those who charged into the danger to help others, some publicly hailed but for the most part anonymous and unheralded.

When the barrier cordon still waved wildly all about Bondi, the imperative of social, faith-based and cultural solidarity was admirably promoted by religious figures. It was a message of love and acceptance – of bringing together rather than splitting apart in a time of targeted violence.

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

Unity, light and love was the message of belief.

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

And yet segments of the Australian polity responded so nauseatingly swiftly with division, finger-pointing and recrimination.

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

Observe the harmful rhetoric of division from longstanding fomenters of Australian racial division, exploiting the attack before the site was even cold. Then read the words of political figures while the investigation was ongoing.

Politics has a formidable task to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is grieving and scared and looking for the light and, not least, 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 grossly inadequate security presence? Like how could the accused attackers have multiple firearms in the family home when the domestic intelligence organisation has so publicly and consistently warned of the danger of targeted attacks?

How rapidly we were subjected to that tired argument (or versions of it) that it’s individuals not weapons that kill. Naturally, both things are valid. It’s feasible to simultaneously pursue new ways to prevent hate-fuelled violence and keep firearms away from its possible actors.

In this metropolis of profound splendor, of pristine blue heavens above sea and shore, the water and the coastline – our shared community spaces – may not look entirely familiar again to the many who’ve observed that famous Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s obscene bloodshed.

We long right now for understanding and meaning, for family, and perhaps for the consolation of beauty in art or nature.

This weekend many Australians are calling off holiday gathering plans. Reflective solitude will feel more appropriate.

But this is perhaps counterintuitively counterintuitive. For in these days of fear, anger, sadness, confusion and loss we require each other now more than ever.

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

But tragically, all of the portents are that cohesion in public life and society will be hard to find this long, draining summer.