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As Australia winds down for a customary Christmas holiday during languorous days of beach and scorching heat accompanied by the soundtrack of sporting matches and cicada song, this year the nation's summer atmosphere seems, unfortunately, like none before.

It would be a significant understatement to describe the collective temperament after the anti-Jewish violent assault on Australian Jews during the beachside Hanukah festivities as one of simple ennui.

Throughout the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of Australian cities – a tone of immediate shock, grief and horror is shifting to fury and bitter division.

Those who had not picked up on the frequently expressed fears of Australian Jews are now acutely aware. Similarly, they are sensitive to balancing the need for a much more immediate, vigorous official crackdown against antisemitism with the freedom to demonstrate against mass atrocities.

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

And yet the social media feeds keep spewing at us the banal instant opinions of those with inflammatory, divisive views but little understanding at all of that profound fragility.

This is a time when I regret not having a greater faith. I lament, because believing in humanity – in our potential for compassion – has let us down so painfully. Something else, something higher, is required.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have witnessed such profound examples of human goodness. The heroism of individuals. The selflessness of bystanders. First responders – police officers and medical staff, those who charged into the gunfire to aid fellow humans, some publicly hailed but for the most part anonymous and unsung.

When the police tape still waved wildly all about Bondi, the necessity of community, faith-based and cultural solidarity was laudably promoted by faith leaders. It was a call of compassion and tolerance – of bringing together rather than splitting apart in a time of antisemitic slaughter.

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

Unity, hope and love was the message of belief.

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

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

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

Observe the harmful rhetoric of disunity from veteran agitators of societal discord, capitalizing on the massacre before the site was even cold. Then consider the words of leadership aspirants while the probe was still active.

Politics has a daunting job to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is grieving and scared and seeking the hope and, not least, answers to so many questions.

Like why, when the official terror alert was assessed as probable, did such a significant open-air Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a woefully insufficient protection? Like how could the accused attackers have six guns in the family home when the domestic intelligence organisation has so openly and repeatedly alerted of the threat of antisemitic violence?

How rapidly we were subjected to that cliched argument (or versions of it) that it’s individuals not weapons that kill. Of course, each point are true. It’s possible to at the same time seek new ways to prevent violent bigotry and keep guns away from its potential perpetrators.

In this metropolis of immense splendor, of pristine azure skies 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 noted that iconic Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s horrific bloodshed.

We yearn right now for understanding and significance, for family, and perhaps for the solace of aesthetics in art or nature.

This weekend many Australians are cancelling holiday gathering plans. Quiet contemplation will seem more appropriate.

But this is perhaps somewhat against instinct. For in these days of fear, anger, sadness, bewilderment and loss we require 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 sadly, all of the portents are that unity in politics and the community will be hard to find this extended, enervating summer.