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While the nation settles into for a customary Christmas holiday across slow-moving days of beach and scorching heat set to the background of sporting matches and cicada song, this year the nation's summer mood seems, sadly, 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 celebrations as one of mere discontent.

Throughout the country, but nowhere more so 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 polarization.

Those who had previously missed the frequently expressed concerns of the Jewish community are now acutely aware. Just as, they are sensitive to reconciling the need for a much more immediate, vigorous official fight against anti-Jewish hatred with the right to demonstrate against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a time for a countrywide dialogue, it is now, when our faith in mankind is so sorely depleted. This is especially so for those of us fortunate enough never to have experienced the hatred and fear of faith-based targeting on this land or elsewhere.

And yet the social media feeds keep churning out at us the banal instant opinions of those with blistering, divisive views but little understanding at all of that terrifying vulnerability.

This is a time when I lament not having a greater faith. I mourn, because having faith in humanity – in mankind’s capacity for compassion – has failed us so painfully. Something else, a greater power, is needed.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have witnessed such profound instances of human goodness. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The selflessness of bystanders. Emergency personnel – law enforcement and paramedics, those who ran towards the gunfire to aid fellow humans, some publicly hailed but for the most part anonymous and unheralded.

When the police tape still fluttered wildly all about Bondi, the necessity of social, religious and ethnic solidarity was laudably promoted by faith leaders. It was a message of love and acceptance – of bringing together rather than splitting apart in a time of antisemitic slaughter.

Consistent with the symbolism of Hanukah (light amid darkness), there was so much fitting evocation of the need for lightness.

Togetherness, light and love was the message of faith.

‘Our public places may not appear quite the same again.’

And yet segments of the political landscape responded so nauseatingly swiftly with fragmentation, finger-pointing and recrimination.

Some politicians gravitated straight for the pessimism, using the atrocity as a cynical chance to question Australia’s migration rules.

Observe the harmful rhetoric of disunity from veteran fomenters of societal discord, exploiting the massacre before the site was even cold. Then consider the words of political figures while the probe was still active.

Government has a formidable job to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is mourning and frightened and looking for the hope and, importantly, answers to so many questions.

Like why, when the official terror alert was assessed as probable, did such a large 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 security agency has so openly and consistently alerted of the danger of antisemitic violence?

How rapidly we were treated to that tired line (or iterations of it) that it’s people not guns that kill. Naturally, both things are valid. It’s feasible to simultaneously seek new ways to prevent hate-fuelled violence and prevent guns away from its possible actors.

In this city of immense beauty, of pristine azure skies above sea and sand, the water and the beaches – our shared community spaces – may not look quite the same again to the many who’ve observed that iconic Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s obscene bloodshed.

We yearn right now for comprehension and significance, for family, and perhaps for the consolation of beauty in culture or nature.

This weekend many Australians are calling off holiday gathering plans. Quiet contemplation will seem more appropriate.

But this is perhaps somewhat against instinct. For in these times of anxiety, anger, sadness, confusion and loss 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 likely need most.

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