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While the nation winds down for a customary Christmas holiday across languorous days of beach and blistering heat accompanied by the soundtrack of Test cricket and insect sounds, this year the country’s summer mood feels, unfortunately, like no other.

It would be a significant oversimplification to characterize the collective temperament after the antisemitic terrorist attack on Jewish Australians during Bondi Hanukah festivities as one of mere discontent.

Across the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of the nation's urban centers – a tone of initial surprise, grief and horror is segueing to anger and bitter division.

Those who had not picked up on the often voiced fears of Australian Jews are now highly attuned. Similarly, they are sensitive to reconciling the need for a far more urgent, vigorous government and institutional fight against antisemitism with the freedom to demonstrate against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a moment for a countrywide dialogue, 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 endured the hatred and dread of faith-based persecution on this continent or anywhere else.

And yet the algorithms keep churning out at us the banal instant opinions of those with blistering, divisive stances but little understanding at all of that terrifying fragility.

This is a period when I lament not having a stronger faith. I lament, because believing in humanity – in mankind’s potential for compassion – has let us down so acutely. Something else, something higher, is needed.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have witnessed such extreme examples of human decency. The heroism of individuals. The bravery of those present. Emergency personnel – law enforcement and medical staff, those who ran towards the gunfire to aid fellow humans, some recognised but for the most part unnamed and unsung.

When the barrier cordon still waved in the wind all about Bondi, the necessity of community, religious and ethnic solidarity was admirably championed by faith leaders. It was a call of love and tolerance – of unifying rather than splitting apart in a moment of antisemitic slaughter.

In keeping with the meaning of Hanukah (illumination amid darkness), there was so much appropriate reference of the need for lightness.

Unity, hope and compassion was the essence of faith.

‘Our shared community spaces may not appear quite the same again.’

And yet segments of the political landscape responded so nauseatingly quickly with division, blame and recrimination.

Some elected officials gravitated straight for the pessimism, using tragedy as a cynical opportunity to question Australia’s migration rules.

Witness the dangerous message 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 investigation was still active.

Politics has a formidable task to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is mourning and frightened and seeking the hope and, not least, answers to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the official terror alert was judged as likely, did such a large public Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a grossly inadequate protection? Like how could the alleged killers have multiple firearms in the residence when the domestic intelligence organisation has so openly and consistently warned of the threat of antisemitic violence?

How quickly we were subjected to that cliched line (or versions of it) that it’s individuals not weapons that cause death. Of course, each point are valid. It’s feasible to at the same time pursue new ways to stop violent bigotry and prevent firearms away from its potential actors.

In this metropolis of profound beauty, of clear blue heavens above ocean and sand, the ocean and the beaches – our shared community spaces – may not look quite the same again to the multitude who’ve noted that iconic Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s obscene violence.

We yearn right now for comprehension and significance, for loved ones, and perhaps for the consolation of beauty in art or nature.

This weekend many Australians are cancelling holiday gathering plans. Reflective solitude will seem more appropriate.

But this is perhaps somewhat against instinct. For in these times of fear, anger, melancholy, confusion and loss we require each other more than ever.

The comfort of community – 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 society will be elusive this extended, enervating summer.