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As Australia winds down for a traditional Christmas holiday during languorous days of beach and blistering heat set to the soundtrack of sporting matches and cicada song, this year the nation's summer mood feels, sadly, like no other.

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

Across the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of Australian cities – a tenor of initial shock, sorrow and terror is segueing to anger and bitter polarization.

Those who had not picked up on the often voiced concerns of Australian Jews are now highly attuned. Similarly, they are attuned to balancing the need for a much more immediate, energetic government and institutional crackdown against anti-Jewish hatred with the right to peacefully protest against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a time for a countrywide dialogue, it is now, when our faith in humanity is so deeply depleted. This is especially so for those of us lucky never to have experienced the hatred and dread of faith-based targeting on this continent or elsewhere.

And yet the algorithms keep spewing at us the trite instant opinions of those with inflammatory, polarizing views but little understanding at all of that terrifying vulnerability.

This is a period when I lament not having a stronger faith. I lament, because having faith in people – in mankind’s capacity for compassion – has failed us so painfully. Something else, something higher, is required.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have witnessed such profound examples of human goodness. The heroism of individuals. The bravery of those present. Emergency personnel – police officers and paramedics, those who charged into the gunfire to aid fellow humans, some recognised but for the most part unnamed and unheralded.

When the police tape still fluttered wildly all about Bondi, the necessity of social, religious and ethnic solidarity was admirably championed by religious figures. It was a message of compassion and tolerance – of bringing together rather than dividing in a time of antisemitic slaughter.

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

Togetherness, light and compassion was the essence of faith.

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

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

Some elected officials moved straight for the pessimism, using tragedy as a cynical opportunity to question Australia’s migration rules.

Observe the dangerous message of division from longstanding agitators of societal discord, capitalizing on the massacre before the crime scene was even cold. Then consider the statements of leadership aspirants while the probe was still active.

Government has a formidable job to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is grieving and frightened and looking for the hope and, not least, explanations to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was assessed as probable, did such a significant open-air Hanukah event go ahead with such a woefully insufficient security presence? Like how could the alleged killers have six guns in the residence when the domestic intelligence organisation has so publicly and repeatedly warned of the danger of antisemitic violence?

How rapidly we were treated to that cliched argument (or iterations of it) that it’s individuals not guns that kill. Of course, both things are true. It’s possible to simultaneously pursue new ways to prevent hate-fuelled violence and prevent guns away from its potential actors.

In this city of immense splendor, of clear azure skies above ocean and sand, the ocean and the beaches – our shared community spaces – may not seem quite the same again to the multitude who’ve noted that famous Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s horrific violence.

We long 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 Christmas party plans. Reflective solitude will seem more in order.

But this is perhaps counterintuitively against instinct. For in these times of anxiety, anger, sadness, confusion and loss we require each other more than ever.

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

But sadly, all of the indicators are that unity in public life and society will be hard to find this extended, draining summer.