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As Australia winds down for a traditional Christmas holiday across slow-moving days of beach and blistering heat accompanied by the background of sporting matches and insect sounds, this year the country’s summer atmosphere seems, unfortunately, like no other.

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

Throughout the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of the nation's urban centers – a tone of immediate shock, grief and terror is shifting to anger and deep polarization.

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, energetic government and institutional fight against anti-Jewish hatred with the freedom to demonstrate against genocide.

If ever there was a moment for a national listening, it is now, when our faith in humanity is so deeply diminished. This is particularly so for those of us fortunate enough never to have endured the hatred and fear of faith-based persecution on this land or anywhere else.

And yet the algorithms keep churning out at us the trite instant opinions of those with inflammatory, divisive stances but no sense at all of that profound vulnerability.

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

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have seen such extreme examples of human goodness. The heroism of individuals. The bravery of those present. First responders – law enforcement and paramedics, those who charged into the gunfire to help fellow humans, some publicly hailed but for the most part unnamed and unsung.

When the barrier cordon still waved in the wind all about Bondi, the necessity of social, religious and ethnic unity was laudably promoted by religious figures. It was a call of love and acceptance – of bringing together rather than splitting apart in a time of targeted violence.

In keeping with the meaning of Hanukah (light amid gloom), there was so much fitting reference of the need for lightness.

Togetherness, light and love was the message of faith.

‘Our public places may not look exactly as they did again.’

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

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

Witness the harmful message of disunity from veteran fomenters of societal discord, exploiting the massacre before the site was even cold. Then read the statements of leadership aspirants while the investigation was still active.

Politics has a formidable task to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is grieving and scared and looking for the hope and, importantly, answers to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the official terror alert was judged as likely, did such a large public Hanukah event go ahead with such a grossly insufficient protection? Like how could the accused attackers have six guns in the family home when the security agency has so openly and consistently warned of the threat of targeted attacks?

How quickly we were treated to that tired argument (or versions of it) that it’s people not guns that kill. Of course, both things are true. It’s feasible to at the same time seek new ways to prevent hate-fuelled violence and prevent guns away from its potential actors.

In this city of profound splendor, of clear blue heavens above sea and shore, 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 horrific bloodshed.

We yearn right now for understanding and meaning, for loved ones, and perhaps for the consolation of beauty in art or the natural world.

This weekend many Australians are calling off holiday gathering plans. Reflective solitude will seem more appropriate.

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

The comfort of togetherness – 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 society will be elusive this long, enervating summer.