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As Australia winds down for a customary Christmas holiday during slow-moving days of coast and scorching heat set to the soundtrack of Test cricket and insect sounds, this year the country’s summer mood seems, sadly, like no other.

It would be a significant oversimplification to describe the collective temperament after the antisemitic terrorist attack on Jewish Australians during Bondi Hanukah celebrations as one of mere discontent.

Across the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of the nation's urban centers – a tone of immediate shock, sorrow and horror is shifting to fury and deep division.

Those who had previously missed the frequently expressed fears of Australian Jews are now highly attuned. Just as, they are attuned to reconciling the need for a far more urgent, vigorous government and institutional fight against anti-Jewish hatred 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 mankind is so sorely depleted. This is especially so for those of us fortunate enough never to have endured the animosity and fear of religious and ethnic targeting on this land or anywhere else.

And yet the algorithms keep churning out at us the banal hot takes of those with inflammatory, polarizing views but little understanding at all of that terrifying fragility.

This is a period when I regret not having a greater faith. I lament, because having faith in humanity – in our capacity for compassion – has failed us so acutely. Something else, a greater power, is needed.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have witnessed such extreme instances of human goodness. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The bravery of those present. Emergency personnel – law enforcement and medical staff, those who charged into the gunfire to help fellow humans, some publicly hailed but for the most part anonymous and unheralded.

When the police tape still waved wildly all about Bondi, the necessity of social, faith-based and cultural unity was laudably championed by religious figures. It was a call of compassion and acceptance – of bringing together rather than dividing in a moment of antisemitic slaughter.

Consistent with the meaning of the Festival of Lights (illumination amid gloom), there was so much appropriate reference of the need for lightness.

Unity, light and love was the message of belief.

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

And yet segments of the Australian polity reacted so disgustingly quickly with division, blame and accusation.

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

Witness the dangerous rhetoric of disunity from veteran fomenters of societal discord, exploiting the attack before the site was even cold. Then consider the words of political figures while the investigation was ongoing.

Government has a daunting job to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is mourning and frightened and seeking the light and, not least, explanations to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the official terror alert was assessed as probable, did such a significant open-air Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a grossly insufficient security presence? Like how could the alleged killers have six guns in the family home when the domestic intelligence organisation has so publicly and repeatedly alerted of the danger of antisemitic violence?

How quickly we were subjected to that cliched line (or versions of it) that it’s individuals not weapons that cause death. Of course, each point are true. It’s feasible to at the same time seek new ways to prevent hate-fuelled violence and prevent guns away from its possible actors.

In this city of profound splendor, of pristine azure skies above sea and sand, the water and the coastline – our shared community spaces – may not look entirely familiar again to the many who’ve noted that iconic Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s obscene bloodshed.

We long right now for understanding and significance, for loved ones, and perhaps for the solace of beauty in culture or nature.

This weekend many Australians are cancelling holiday gathering plans. Reflective solitude will feel more appropriate.

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

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

But sadly, all of the indicators are that unity in politics and the community will be elusive this extended, enervating summer.