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As the nation settles into for a traditional Christmas holiday across slow-moving days of coast and scorching heat accompanied by the background of Test cricket and cicada song, this year the nation's summer atmosphere seems, sadly, like none before.

It would be a dramatic understatement to describe the national temperament after the antisemitic violent assault on Jewish Australians during the beachside Hanukah festivities as one of simple discontent.

Across the country, but especially 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 deep division.

Those who had previously missed the often voiced fears of Australian Jews are now acutely aware. Just as, they are sensitive to reconciling the need for a much more immediate, vigorous government and institutional crackdown against antisemitism with the freedom to peacefully protest against genocide.

If ever there was a time for a countrywide dialogue, it is now, when our faith in humanity is so deeply diminished. This is particularly so for those of us lucky never to have endured the hatred and dread of faith-based persecution on this continent or elsewhere.

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

This is a period when I regret not having a stronger faith. I mourn, because believing in humanity – in mankind’s potential for compassion – has failed us so acutely. Something else, a greater power, is required.

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

When the police tape still fluttered wildly all about Bondi, the imperative of social, religious and cultural solidarity was admirably championed by religious figures. It was a call of love and tolerance – of bringing together rather than splitting apart in a moment of targeted violence.

Consistent with the meaning of the Festival of Lights (illumination amid darkness), there was so much appropriate evocation of the need for hope.

Unity, light and love was the message of faith.

‘Our public places may not look quite the same again.’

And yet segments of the political landscape reacted so nauseatingly quickly with fragmentation, finger-pointing and accusation.

Some politicians moved straight for the darkness, using the atrocity as a cynical opportunity to question Australia’s immigration policies.

Witness the dangerous rhetoric of division from veteran agitators of Australian racial division, capitalizing on the massacre before the crime scene was even cold. Then consider the words of leadership aspirants while the investigation was still active.

Politics has a daunting job to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is grieving and scared and looking for the hope and, importantly, explanations to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was judged as probable, did such a significant public Hanukah event go ahead with such a woefully inadequate security presence? Like how could the alleged killers have multiple firearms in the residence when the domestic intelligence organisation has so publicly and consistently alerted of the threat of targeted attacks?

How rapidly we were subjected to that cliched line (or iterations of it) that it’s people not weapons that cause death. Of course, both things are valid. It’s possible to at the same time pursue new ways to prevent violent bigotry and prevent guns away from its possible actors.

In this metropolis of profound splendor, of clear blue heavens above sea and shore, the ocean and the coastline – our communal areas – may not look entirely familiar again to the multitude who’ve observed that iconic Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s horrific bloodshed.

We long right now for understanding and significance, for family, and perhaps for the solace of beauty in culture or the natural world.

This weekend many Australians are cancelling Christmas party plans. Quiet contemplation will seem more in order.

But this is perhaps somewhat against instinct. For in these days of fear, outrage, melancholy, confusion and grief we require each other more than ever.

The reassurance of togetherness – 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 the community will be hard to find this extended, enervating summer.