While Australia settles into for a traditional Christmas holiday across languorous days of coast and blistering heat accompanied by the soundtrack 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 collective temperament after the antisemitic terrorist attack on Australian Jews during Bondi Hanukah celebrations as one of mere discontent.
Across the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of Australian cities – a tenor of initial shock, sorrow and terror is shifting to anger and bitter division.
Those who had previously missed the often voiced concerns of Australian Jews are now acutely aware. Similarly, they are sensitive to reconciling the need for a much more immediate, vigorous official fight against antisemitism with the right to peacefully protest against genocide.
If ever there was a time for a national listening, it is now, when our faith in humanity is so sorely depleted. This is especially so for those of us fortunate enough never to have experienced the animosity and dread of religious and ethnic targeting on this continent or anywhere else.
And yet the algorithms keep spewing at us the trite instant opinions of those with inflammatory, divisive views but no sense at all of that terrifying vulnerability.
This is a period when I lament not having a greater spiritual belief. I mourn, because having faith in people – in mankind’s capacity for compassion – has let us down so acutely. A different source, a greater power, is needed.
And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have witnessed such profound instances of human decency. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The bravery of those present. First responders – law enforcement and paramedics, those who charged into the gunfire to aid fellow humans, some recognised but for the most part anonymous and unheralded.
When the police tape still fluttered wildly all about Bondi, the necessity of community, religious and cultural solidarity was laudably promoted by faith leaders. It was a message of compassion and tolerance – of bringing together rather than dividing in a time of targeted violence.
In keeping with the symbolism of Hanukah (illumination amid darkness), there was so much fitting reference of the need for lightness.
Togetherness, light and compassion was the essence of belief.
‘Our shared community spaces may not appear exactly as they did again.’
And yet segments of the political landscape reacted so nauseatingly quickly with fragmentation, finger-pointing and accusation.
Some elected officials moved straight for the pessimism, using the atrocity as a cynical opportunity to question Australia’s migration rules.
Observe the dangerous message of division from veteran agitators of societal discord, capitalizing on the attack before the crime scene was even cold. Then consider the words 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 mourning and frightened and seeking the light and, importantly, answers to so many questions.
Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was assessed as probable, did such a significant open-air Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a woefully inadequate security presence? Like how could the accused attackers have six guns in the family home when the domestic intelligence organisation has so openly and repeatedly alerted of the danger of targeted attacks?
How quickly we were subjected to that cliched line (or iterations of it) that it’s people not weapons that cause death. Naturally, both things are valid. It’s feasible to at the same time seek new ways to prevent hate-fuelled violence and prevent guns away from its possible actors.
In this city of profound beauty, of pristine azure skies above ocean and sand, the water and the coastline – our shared community spaces – may not look quite the same again to the multitude who’ve observed that iconic Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s horrific bloodshed.
We long right now for comprehension and meaning, for loved ones, and perhaps for the solace of beauty in culture or nature.
This weekend many Australians are cancelling Christmas party plans. Quiet contemplation will feel more in order.
But this is perhaps somewhat counterintuitive. For in these times of anxiety, outrage, melancholy, bewilderment and grief we require each other now more than ever.
The comfort of community – the binding force of the unity in the very word – is what we probably need most.
But sadly, all of the portents are that cohesion in public life and the community will be elusive this long, draining summer.
