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As Australia settles into for a traditional Christmas holiday during languorous days of coast and blistering heat set to the soundtrack of Test cricket and insect sounds, this year the nation's summer mood seems, sadly, like none before.

It would be a dramatic understatement to characterize the national temperament after the antisemitic terrorist attack on Australian Jews during the beachside Hanukah festivities as one of simple discontent.

Throughout the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of the nation's urban centers – a tenor of immediate shock, grief and terror is segueing to anger and deep polarization.

Those who had previously missed the frequently expressed fears of the Jewish community are now highly attuned. Similarly, they are attuned to reconciling the need for a far more urgent, vigorous government and institutional fight against anti-Jewish hatred with the right to demonstrate against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a time for a countrywide dialogue, it is now, when our belief in mankind is so sorely depleted. This is particularly so for those of us lucky never to have experienced the hatred and fear of faith-based targeting on this continent or anywhere else.

And yet the algorithms keep churning out at us the trite hot takes of those with inflammatory, divisive views but no sense at all of that profound vulnerability.

This is a time when I regret not having a greater spiritual belief. I mourn, because believing in people – in our capacity for compassion – has let us down so painfully. Something else, something higher, is required.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have witnessed such extreme instances of human decency. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The selflessness of bystanders. First responders – law enforcement and paramedics, those who charged into the gunfire to help fellow humans, some publicly hailed but for the most part unnamed and unheralded.

When the police tape still fluttered wildly all about Bondi, the necessity of community, religious and cultural unity was laudably championed by faith leaders. It was a call of love and acceptance – of bringing together rather than dividing in a time of antisemitic slaughter.

In keeping with the meaning of Hanukah (light amid gloom), there was so much appropriate evocation of the need for hope.

Togetherness, light and love was the essence of faith.

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

And yet segments of the Australian polity responded so nauseatingly swiftly with division, blame and accusation.

Some elected officials moved straight for the pessimism, using tragedy as a cynical opportunity to challenge Australia’s immigration policies.

Observe the harmful rhetoric of disunity from longstanding fomenters of societal discord, exploiting the attack before the crime scene was even cold. Then read the statements of political figures while the investigation was still active.

Politics has a formidable task to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is mourning and scared and looking for the hope and, not least, explanations to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was judged as probable, did such a significant public Hanukah event go ahead with such a woefully insufficient protection? Like how could the alleged killers have multiple firearms in the family home when the security agency has so openly and repeatedly alerted 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 kill. Naturally, each point are valid. It’s possible to simultaneously pursue new ways to prevent hate-fuelled violence and prevent guns away from its potential perpetrators.

In this metropolis of immense beauty, of pristine azure skies above sea and sand, the ocean and the coastline – our shared community spaces – may not seem entirely familiar again to the many 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 art or nature.

This weekend many Australians are calling off holiday gathering plans. Reflective solitude will feel more appropriate.

But this is perhaps somewhat against instinct. For in these days of fear, outrage, sadness, confusion and loss we require each other now more than ever.

The reassurance of togetherness – the human glue 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 the community will be hard to find this long, draining summer.