While Australia settles into for a customary Christmas holiday during languorous days of coast and blistering heat accompanied by the soundtrack of sporting matches and cicada song, this year the nation's summer mood feels, unfortunately, like no other.
It would be a significant oversimplification to describe the national temperament after the anti-Jewish violent assault on Jewish Australians during the beachside Hanukah festivities as one of simple discontent.
Across the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of the nation's urban centers – a tenor of immediate surprise, sorrow and terror is shifting to fury and deep division.
Those who had not picked up on the frequently expressed concerns of Australian Jews are now acutely aware. Just as, they are sensitive to balancing the need for a much more immediate, vigorous government and institutional fight against antisemitism with the freedom to demonstrate against mass atrocities.
If ever there was a time for a national listening, it is now, when our faith in mankind is so deeply diminished. This is particularly so for those of us fortunate enough never to have experienced the animosity and dread of religious and ethnic targeting on this continent or elsewhere.
And yet the algorithms keep spewing at us the banal instant opinions of those with blistering, divisive stances but no sense at all of that profound vulnerability.
This is a period when I regret not having a greater spiritual belief. I mourn, because believing in people – in mankind’s capacity for kindness – has failed us so acutely. Something else, something higher, is needed.
And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have seen such extreme examples of human goodness. The heroism of individuals. The selflessness of bystanders. Emergency personnel – law enforcement and medical staff, those who ran towards the danger to help others, some publicly hailed but for the most part anonymous and unsung.
When the police tape still fluttered in the wind all about Bondi, the necessity of community, religious and ethnic solidarity was laudably championed by religious figures. It was a call of love and tolerance – of unifying rather than dividing in a time of antisemitic slaughter.
Consistent with the meaning of Hanukah (illumination amid gloom), there was so much fitting evocation of the need for lightness.
Togetherness, light and love was the message of belief.
‘Our shared community spaces may not appear exactly as they did again.’
And yet segments of the political landscape responded so disgustingly swiftly with division, finger-pointing and accusation.
Some elected officials gravitated straight for the pessimism, using tragedy as a cynical opportunity to question Australia’s immigration policies.
Witness the dangerous rhetoric of division from veteran agitators of Australian racial division, capitalizing on the massacre before the site was even cold. Then read the words of leadership aspirants while the probe was ongoing.
Politics has a daunting task to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is grieving and scared and seeking the light and, not least, answers to so many uncertainties.
Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was assessed as probable, did such a large open-air Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a grossly inadequate security presence? 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 antisemitic violence?
How rapidly we were treated to that cliched argument (or iterations of it) that it’s people not weapons that cause death. Naturally, each point are true. It’s feasible to at the same time seek new ways to stop violent bigotry and prevent firearms away from its possible actors.
In this city of immense beauty, of clear blue heavens above ocean and sand, the ocean and the coastline – our shared community spaces – may not look quite the same again to the many who’ve noted that iconic Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s obscene bloodshed.
We yearn right now for understanding and significance, for family, and perhaps for the solace of aesthetics in art or the natural world.
This weekend many Australians are cancelling holiday gathering plans. Reflective solitude will feel more in order.
But this is perhaps somewhat counterintuitive. For in these times of anxiety, outrage, melancholy, confusion and grief 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 portents are that unity in public life and the community will be elusive this long, enervating summer.
