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As the nation settles into for a customary Christmas holiday across languorous days of coast and scorching heat set to the soundtrack of sporting matches and insect sounds, this year the nation's summer atmosphere seems, unfortunately, like no other.

It would be a significant oversimplification to characterize the national disposition after the antisemitic terrorist attack on Australian Jews during Bondi Hanukah festivities as one of mere ennui.

Across the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of Australian cities – a tenor of initial shock, grief and terror is shifting to anger and bitter polarization.

Those who had not picked up on 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 mass atrocities.

If ever there was a moment for a countrywide dialogue, it is now, when our belief in mankind is so deeply depleted. This is particularly so for those of us fortunate enough never to have experienced the animosity and dread of faith-based targeting on this land or anywhere else.

And yet the social media feeds keep churning out at us the banal hot takes of those with inflammatory, divisive views but little understanding at all of that terrifying fragility.

This is a period when I regret not having a greater faith. I mourn, because believing in humanity – in mankind’s potential for kindness – has let us down so acutely. A different source, a greater power, is required.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have witnessed such profound instances of human goodness. The heroism of individuals. The bravery of those present. First responders – 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 fluttered in the wind all about Bondi, the imperative of community, religious and cultural unity was admirably promoted by faith leaders. It was a message of compassion and tolerance – of unifying rather than dividing in a time of targeted violence.

Consistent with the symbolism of the Festival of Lights (light amid gloom), there was so much appropriate reference of the need for hope.

Togetherness, hope and compassion was the message of belief.

‘Our shared community spaces may not look exactly as they did again.’

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

Some elected officials gravitated straight for the darkness, using the atrocity as a cynical chance to question Australia’s migration rules.

Observe the harmful rhetoric of division from veteran fomenters of societal discord, exploiting the massacre before the crime scene was even cold. Then read the words of political figures while the investigation was ongoing.

Government has a formidable task to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is mourning and scared and looking for the light and, not least, explanations to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the official terror alert was assessed as likely, did such a significant public Hanukah event go ahead with such a grossly insufficient security presence? Like how could the accused attackers have multiple firearms in the family home when the security agency has so publicly and repeatedly alerted of the threat of antisemitic violence?

How rapidly we were treated to that tired argument (or versions of it) that it’s people not weapons that cause death. Naturally, each point are valid. It’s feasible to at the same time seek new ways to prevent violent bigotry and prevent firearms away from its potential actors.

In this city of profound splendor, of pristine azure skies above sea and shore, the water and the beaches – our shared community spaces – may not seem quite the same again to the many who’ve observed that famous Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s horrific bloodshed.

We yearn right now for understanding and significance, for loved ones, and perhaps for the solace of aesthetics in art or the natural world.

This weekend many Australians are cancelling holiday gathering plans. Quiet contemplation will feel more appropriate.

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

The comfort of togetherness – 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 politics and society will be elusive this extended, enervating summer.