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While Australia winds down for a traditional Christmas holiday across slow-moving days of beach and blistering heat set to the soundtrack of sporting matches and cicada song, this year the country’s summer mood seems, sadly, like no other.

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

Throughout the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of the nation's urban centers – a tone of initial shock, grief and terror is shifting to fury and bitter division.

Those who had not picked up on the often voiced concerns of Australian Jews are now acutely aware. Similarly, they are sensitive to balancing the need for a much more immediate, vigorous official fight against antisemitism with the right to peacefully protest against genocide.

If ever there was a moment for a countrywide dialogue, it is now, when our belief in humanity is so sorely depleted. This is particularly so for those of us fortunate enough never to have experienced the hatred and dread of faith-based persecution on this land or elsewhere.

And yet the algorithms keep spewing at us the banal hot takes of those with blistering, polarizing views but no sense at all of that terrifying vulnerability.

This is a time when I regret not having a greater spiritual belief. I mourn, because having faith in people – in our capacity for kindness – has let us down so painfully. Something else, a greater power, is required.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have witnessed such extreme examples of human decency. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The selflessness of bystanders. Emergency personnel – police officers and paramedics, those who ran towards the gunfire to aid others, some publicly hailed but for the most part anonymous and unsung.

When the barrier cordon still fluttered wildly all about Bondi, the necessity of community, faith-based and ethnic unity was laudably championed by religious figures. It was a call of love and acceptance – of bringing together rather than splitting apart in a time of targeted violence.

In keeping with the symbolism of Hanukah (light amid darkness), there was so much fitting evocation of the need for lightness.

Togetherness, light and love was the message of belief.

‘Our public places may not appear exactly as they did again.’

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

Some elected officials gravitated straight for the pessimism, using tragedy as a calculating opportunity to question Australia’s immigration policies.

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

Government has a formidable task to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is grieving and frightened and seeking the light and, not least, answers to so many questions.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was judged as likely, did such a significant public Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a grossly insufficient protection? Like how could the accused attackers have six guns in the family home when the security agency has so publicly and consistently alerted of the danger of antisemitic violence?

How quickly we were subjected to that cliched argument (or iterations of it) that it’s individuals not weapons that kill. Of course, both things are true. It’s feasible to at the same time pursue new ways to prevent violent bigotry and prevent guns away from its potential actors.

In this city of immense beauty, of clear blue heavens above ocean and sand, the ocean and the beaches – our shared community spaces – may not seem quite the same again to the many who’ve observed that iconic Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s obscene violence.

We yearn right now for comprehension and significance, for loved ones, and perhaps for the consolation of aesthetics in art or the natural world.

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 days of fear, outrage, melancholy, confusion and loss we require each other now more than ever.

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

But sadly, all of the indicators are that cohesion in public life and society will be hard to find this extended, enervating summer.