The Initial Impact and Fear of the Bondi Shooting Is Transitioning to Rage and Division. It Is Imperative We Look For the Light.

While the nation settles into for a customary Christmas holiday across slow-moving days of beach and scorching heat set to the soundtrack of Test cricket and insect sounds, this year the nation's summer mood feels, sadly, like no other.

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

Throughout the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of the nation's urban centers – a tenor of initial surprise, sorrow and horror is shifting to anger and bitter polarization.

Those who had not picked up on the frequently expressed concerns of the Jewish community are now acutely aware. Similarly, they are attuned to balancing the need for a much more immediate, energetic government and institutional fight against antisemitism 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 sorely diminished. This is especially so for those of us lucky never to have endured the animosity and fear of faith-based persecution on this land or elsewhere.

And yet the algorithms keep churning out at us the banal instant opinions of those with blistering, polarizing views but no sense at all of that profound fragility.

This is a time when I lament not having a greater spiritual belief. I mourn, because having faith in people – in our potential for kindness – has let us down so acutely. Something else, a greater power, is needed.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have seen such extreme instances of human goodness. The heroism of individuals. The bravery of those present. Emergency personnel – police officers and paramedics, those who charged into the danger to help others, some publicly hailed but for the most part unnamed and unheralded.

When the police tape still waved wildly all about Bondi, the necessity of social, faith-based and cultural unity was admirably promoted by religious figures. It was a call of compassion and acceptance – of bringing together rather than splitting apart in a moment of targeted violence.

Consistent with the symbolism of Hanukah (illumination amid gloom), there was so much fitting evocation of the need for hope.

Unity, hope and compassion was the essence of faith.

And yet elements of the political landscape reacted so disgustingly swiftly with division, blame and recrimination.

Some politicians gravitated straight for the darkness, using tragedy as a cynical opportunity to challenge Australia’s migration rules.

Witness the harmful rhetoric of disunity from veteran agitators of Australian racial division, capitalizing on the massacre before the site was even cold. Then consider the words of leadership aspirants while the probe was ongoing.

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

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was judged as likely, did such a large open-air Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a woefully insufficient protection? Like how could the alleged killers have multiple firearms in the family home when the security agency has so openly and consistently warned of the danger of targeted attacks?

How rapidly we were subjected to that cliched line (or versions of it) that it’s people not guns that cause death. Of course, both things are true. It’s possible to at the same time pursue new ways to stop violent bigotry and prevent guns away from its potential actors.

In this metropolis of immense beauty, of pristine azure skies above sea and shore, the water and the coastline – 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 obscene bloodshed.

We long right now for comprehension and meaning, for loved ones, and perhaps for the solace of aesthetics in culture or the natural world.

This weekend many Australians are cancelling Christmas party plans. Reflective solitude will seem more in order.

But this is perhaps counterintuitively counterintuitive. For in these days of anxiety, outrage, melancholy, confusion and loss we need each other now more than ever.

The reassurance of togetherness – the binding force 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 hard to find this extended, draining summer.