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As Australia settles into for a customary Christmas holiday during languorous days of beach and scorching heat accompanied by the background of sporting matches and insect sounds, this year the country’s summer atmosphere seems, unfortunately, like no other.

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

Throughout the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of the nation's urban centers – a tenor of initial surprise, sorrow and horror is shifting to anger and bitter division.

Those who had not picked up on the frequently expressed concerns of Australian Jews are now highly attuned. Just as, they are sensitive to balancing the need for a much more immediate, energetic official fight against antisemitism with the freedom to peacefully protest against mass atrocities.

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

And yet the algorithms keep churning out at us the banal hot takes of those with blistering, divisive stances but no sense at all of that profound 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 acutely. A different source, something higher, is required.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have seen such extreme examples of human decency. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The selflessness of bystanders. First responders – 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 barrier cordon still waved in the wind all about Bondi, the imperative of social, faith-based and cultural unity was admirably promoted by religious figures. It was a message of love and acceptance – of unifying rather than splitting apart in a time of antisemitic slaughter.

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

Unity, hope and love was the essence of faith.

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

And yet segments of the political landscape reacted so disgustingly quickly with division, blame and recrimination.

Some politicians gravitated straight for the darkness, using tragedy as a calculating opportunity to challenge Australia’s migration rules.

Observe the harmful message of division from veteran fomenters of societal discord, capitalizing on the attack before the crime scene was even cold. Then consider the statements of political figures while the probe was ongoing.

Government has a daunting task to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is mourning and scared and looking for the hope and, not least, answers to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was judged as probable, did such a large public Hanukah event go ahead with such a woefully insufficient security presence? Like how could the accused attackers have six guns in the family home when the security agency has so publicly and repeatedly alerted of the danger of antisemitic violence?

How rapidly we were treated to that tired line (or versions of it) that it’s people not guns that cause death. Naturally, each point are valid. It’s possible to at the same time pursue new ways to stop violent bigotry and prevent firearms away from its possible actors.

In this city of immense beauty, of pristine azure skies above ocean and sand, the ocean and the beaches – 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 long right now for comprehension and significance, for family, and perhaps for the consolation of aesthetics in culture or nature.

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

But this is perhaps somewhat counterintuitive. For in these times of anxiety, outrage, sadness, bewilderment and loss we need each other now more than ever.

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

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