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While the nation winds down for a customary Christmas holiday across languorous days of coast and scorching heat accompanied by the soundtrack of Test cricket and cicada song, this year the nation's summer atmosphere seems, sadly, like no other.

It would be a dramatic oversimplification to describe the national disposition after the antisemitic terrorist attack on Jewish Australians during the beachside Hanukah celebrations as one of simple discontent.

Throughout the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of the nation's urban centers – a tenor of initial surprise, sorrow and terror is shifting to fury and deep division.

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 crackdown against anti-Jewish hatred with the right to peacefully protest against genocide.

If ever there was a time for a countrywide dialogue, it is now, when our belief in mankind is so deeply diminished. This is especially so for those of us lucky never to have experienced the hatred and dread of religious and ethnic 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 no sense at all of that profound fragility.

This is a period when I regret not having a stronger spiritual belief. I mourn, because having faith in humanity – in mankind’s potential for compassion – has let us down so painfully. A different source, something higher, is needed.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have witnessed such profound examples of human goodness. The heroism of individuals. The selflessness of bystanders. First responders – police officers and medical staff, those who ran towards the danger to aid others, some publicly hailed but for the most part anonymous and unheralded.

When the police tape still waved in the wind all about Bondi, the imperative of community, religious and cultural solidarity was admirably promoted by faith leaders. It was a message of love and tolerance – of bringing together rather than splitting apart in a time of targeted violence.

In keeping with the symbolism of the Festival of Lights (light amid darkness), there was so much fitting evocation of the need for lightness.

Togetherness, hope and love was the essence of faith.

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

And yet segments of the Australian polity reacted so nauseatingly quickly with fragmentation, blame and accusation.

Some elected officials moved straight for the pessimism, using the atrocity as a calculating opportunity to question Australia’s immigration policies.

Observe the dangerous rhetoric of disunity from longstanding fomenters of Australian racial division, exploiting the massacre before the site was even cold. Then consider the statements of political figures while the investigation was ongoing.

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

Like why, when the official terror alert was assessed as probable, did such a significant public Hanukah event go ahead with such a woefully insufficient security presence? Like how could the accused attackers have multiple firearms in the family home when the domestic intelligence organisation has so openly and consistently warned of the danger of targeted attacks?

How quickly we were subjected to that tired argument (or iterations of it) that it’s people not guns that cause death. Naturally, each point are true. It’s possible to at the same time seek new ways to stop hate-fuelled violence and keep firearms away from its possible actors.

In this city of profound beauty, of clear azure skies above sea and shore, the ocean and the coastline – our communal areas – may not seem entirely familiar again to the multitude who’ve observed that famous Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s obscene violence.

We long right now for understanding and meaning, for family, 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 feel more appropriate.

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

The comfort of community – the human glue of the unity in the very word – is what we likely need most.

But tragically, all of the portents are that cohesion in public life and the community will be elusive this long, draining summer.