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While Australia winds down for a traditional Christmas holiday during languorous days of beach and scorching heat set to the soundtrack of Test cricket and cicada song, this year the nation's summer mood seems, sadly, like none before.

It would be a significant understatement to describe the national disposition after the anti-Jewish violent assault on Jewish Australians during the beachside Hanukah festivities as one of mere ennui.

Throughout the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of the nation's urban centers – a tenor of immediate shock, grief and horror is shifting to fury and deep division.

Those who had not picked up on the frequently expressed fears of Australian Jews are now highly attuned. Just as, they are sensitive to balancing the need for a far more urgent, vigorous government and institutional fight against antisemitism 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 sorely diminished. This is particularly so for those of us fortunate enough never to have experienced the animosity and dread of faith-based persecution on this land or elsewhere.

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

This is a time when I lament not having a greater spiritual belief. I mourn, because believing in humanity – in our capacity for compassion – has let us down so acutely. Something else, something higher, is needed.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have witnessed such profound examples of human decency. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The selflessness of bystanders. Emergency personnel – law enforcement and medical staff, those who charged into the gunfire to help fellow humans, some recognised but for the most part anonymous and unsung.

When the police tape still fluttered in the wind all about Bondi, the imperative of social, religious and ethnic unity was admirably promoted by faith leaders. It was a call of compassion and acceptance – of bringing together rather than dividing in a time of antisemitic slaughter.

Consistent with the symbolism of the Festival of Lights (light amid gloom), there was so much fitting reference of the need for hope.

Unity, light and love was the message of belief.

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

And yet elements of the Australian polity reacted so nauseatingly swiftly with division, finger-pointing and recrimination.

Some politicians gravitated straight for the darkness, using the atrocity as a cynical chance to challenge Australia’s immigration policies.

Observe the dangerous rhetoric of disunity from veteran fomenters of Australian racial division, exploiting the massacre before the site was even cold. Then consider the statements of political figures while the probe was still active.

Politics has a formidable task to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is grieving and scared and seeking the hope and, importantly, explanations to so many questions.

Like why, when the official terror alert was judged as likely, did such a large open-air Hanukah event go ahead with such a woefully inadequate security presence? Like how could the accused attackers have six guns in the residence when the security agency has so publicly and consistently warned of the danger of antisemitic violence?

How quickly we were treated to that cliched line (or versions of it) that it’s people not guns that kill. Naturally, each point are true. It’s feasible to simultaneously pursue new ways to stop violent bigotry and prevent firearms away from its potential actors.

In this city of immense splendor, of pristine blue heavens above ocean and shore, the water and the coastline – our shared community spaces – may not look entirely familiar again to the many who’ve observed that iconic Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s obscene bloodshed.

We long right now for comprehension and meaning, for family, and perhaps for the consolation 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 counterintuitive. For in these times of fear, outrage, melancholy, confusion and loss we need each other more than ever.

The reassurance of community – the binding force of the unity in the very word – is what we probably need most.

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