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While the nation winds down for a customary Christmas holiday during languorous days of coast and blistering heat set to the background of Test cricket and cicada song, this year the country’s summer mood feels, sadly, like no other.

It would be a significant understatement to describe the collective temperament after the anti-Jewish violent assault on Jewish Australians during Bondi Hanukah festivities as one of mere discontent.

Throughout the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of the nation's urban centers – a tenor of initial shock, sorrow and horror is segueing to anger and deep polarization.

Those who had previously missed the often voiced fears of Australian Jews are now acutely aware. Just as, they are sensitive to balancing the need for a far more urgent, vigorous official fight against anti-Jewish hatred with the freedom to peacefully protest against genocide.

If ever there was a moment for a countrywide dialogue, it is now, when our faith in mankind is so deeply diminished. This is especially so for those of us fortunate enough never to have endured the animosity and fear of faith-based targeting on this continent or anywhere else.

And yet the algorithms keep spewing at us the banal hot takes of those with blistering, polarizing stances but little understanding at all of that profound fragility.

This is a period when I regret not having a greater faith. I mourn, because believing in people – in our capacity for kindness – has failed us so acutely. Something else, something higher, is required.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have witnessed such extreme examples of human goodness. The heroism of individuals. The selflessness of bystanders. First responders – 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 barrier cordon still fluttered wildly all about Bondi, the imperative of community, faith-based and ethnic unity was laudably promoted by religious figures. It was a message of compassion and acceptance – of bringing together rather than splitting apart in a time of targeted violence.

In keeping with the symbolism of the Festival of Lights (light amid darkness), there was so much appropriate evocation of the need for hope.

Togetherness, light and compassion was the message of belief.

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

And yet segments of the Australian polity reacted so disgustingly quickly with fragmentation, finger-pointing and accusation.

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

Observe the dangerous rhetoric of disunity from longstanding fomenters of societal discord, capitalizing on the attack before the crime scene was even cold. Then read the statements 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 frightened and seeking the light and, importantly, answers to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was judged as probable, did such a significant public Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a grossly insufficient security presence? Like how could the accused attackers have six guns in the residence when the domestic intelligence organisation has so openly and consistently alerted of the threat of targeted attacks?

How rapidly we were treated to that tired argument (or iterations of it) that it’s people not weapons that cause death. Naturally, both things are true. It’s possible to at the same time pursue new ways to stop hate-fuelled violence and prevent guns away from its potential perpetrators.

In this city of profound beauty, of pristine azure skies above ocean and sand, the water and the coastline – our shared community spaces – may not seem entirely familiar 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 understanding and meaning, for family, and perhaps for the consolation of beauty in culture or the natural world.

This weekend many Australians are calling off holiday gathering plans. Quiet contemplation will feel more in order.

But this is perhaps counterintuitively counterintuitive. For in these times of fear, anger, melancholy, bewilderment and grief we need each other now more than ever.

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

But tragically, all of the indicators are that cohesion in politics and the community will be hard to find this extended, draining summer.