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While Australia settles into for a customary Christmas holiday during slow-moving days of coast and scorching heat set to the background of Test cricket and cicada song, this year the nation's summer atmosphere feels, unfortunately, like no other.

It would be a significant understatement to describe the collective disposition after the anti-Jewish violent assault on Jewish Australians during Bondi Hanukah celebrations as one of simple ennui.

Across the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of Australian cities – a tenor of initial shock, sorrow and horror is shifting to fury and deep polarization.

Those who had previously missed the frequently expressed fears of Australian Jews are now highly attuned. Similarly, they are sensitive to balancing the need for a much more immediate, energetic government and institutional fight against anti-Jewish hatred with the right to peacefully protest against genocide.

If ever there was a time for a countrywide dialogue, it is now, when our belief in humanity is so deeply depleted. This is particularly so for those of us lucky never to have experienced the animosity and dread of religious and ethnic targeting on this land or anywhere else.

And yet the social media feeds keep spewing at us the banal instant opinions of those with inflammatory, divisive stances but no sense at all of that profound vulnerability.

This is a time when I regret not having a greater faith. I mourn, because believing in humanity – in our capacity for kindness – has failed us so painfully. A different source, something higher, is needed.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have seen such profound instances of human decency. The heroism of individuals. The selflessness of bystanders. Emergency personnel – police officers and paramedics, those who charged into the danger to help others, some recognised but for the most part anonymous and unsung.

When the barrier cordon still waved wildly all about Bondi, the imperative of social, faith-based and cultural unity was admirably championed by religious figures. It was a call of love and acceptance – of bringing together rather than splitting apart 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 lightness.

Togetherness, hope and compassion was the essence of faith.

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

And yet elements of the Australian polity reacted so nauseatingly quickly with fragmentation, blame and recrimination.

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

Witness the dangerous message of disunity from veteran agitators of Australian racial division, capitalizing on 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 job to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is grieving and frightened and looking for the light and, not least, explanations to so many questions.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was assessed as likely, did such a significant open-air Hanukah event go ahead with such a grossly inadequate protection? Like how could the alleged killers have multiple firearms in the family home when the domestic intelligence organisation has so publicly and repeatedly warned of the danger of targeted attacks?

How rapidly we were subjected to that tired line (or iterations of it) that it’s people not weapons that kill. Naturally, each point are valid. It’s feasible to at the same time pursue new ways to stop hate-fuelled violence and keep guns away from its potential perpetrators.

In this city of profound beauty, of clear blue heavens above ocean and sand, the ocean and the coastline – our communal areas – may not seem quite the same again to the multitude who’ve observed that iconic Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s obscene violence.

We yearn right now for comprehension and significance, for loved ones, and perhaps for the solace of aesthetics in culture or nature.

This weekend many Australians are calling off Christmas party plans. Reflective solitude will feel more appropriate.

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

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

But tragically, all of the portents are that unity in public life and the community will be elusive this extended, draining summer.