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While the nation winds down for a customary Christmas holiday during slow-moving days of coast and scorching heat accompanied by the background of sporting matches and cicada song, this year the nation's summer mood seems, unfortunately, like none before.

It would be a dramatic understatement to characterize the collective disposition after the antisemitic terrorist attack on Jewish Australians during the beachside Hanukah celebrations as one of mere discontent.

Throughout the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of the nation's urban centers – a tone of immediate surprise, sorrow and terror is segueing to fury and bitter division.

Those who had previously missed the frequently expressed concerns of the Jewish community are now highly attuned. Just as, they are attuned to reconciling the need for a much more immediate, energetic government and institutional crackdown against anti-Jewish hatred with the freedom to peacefully protest against genocide.

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

And yet the social media feeds keep churning out at us the trite instant opinions of those with blistering, divisive stances but little understanding at all of that profound vulnerability.

This is a time when I regret not having a greater spiritual belief. I lament, because having faith in humanity – in mankind’s capacity for compassion – has let us down so painfully. Something else, something higher, is required.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have seen such extreme examples of human decency. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The selflessness of bystanders. Emergency personnel – police officers and medical staff, those who charged into the danger to help others, some publicly hailed but for the most part anonymous and unsung.

When the police tape still fluttered in the wind all about Bondi, the imperative of social, faith-based and cultural solidarity was admirably promoted by faith leaders. It was a message of love and tolerance – of unifying rather than splitting apart in a time of antisemitic slaughter.

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

Unity, hope and love was the message of faith.

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

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

Some politicians moved straight for the darkness, using the atrocity as a cynical chance to challenge Australia’s migration rules.

Observe the harmful rhetoric of division from veteran agitators of societal discord, exploiting the massacre before the site was even cold. Then read the words of leadership aspirants while the investigation was ongoing.

Politics has a daunting job to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is grieving and frightened and looking for the light and, not least, answers to so many questions.

Like why, when the official terror alert was assessed as probable, did such a significant open-air Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a woefully insufficient protection? Like how could the accused attackers have six guns in the family home when the domestic intelligence organisation has so publicly and repeatedly warned of the danger of targeted attacks?

How rapidly we were subjected to that cliched line (or versions of it) that it’s people not weapons that kill. Naturally, each point are valid. It’s feasible to simultaneously pursue new ways to stop violent bigotry and keep firearms away from its possible perpetrators.

In this city of immense splendor, of pristine blue heavens above ocean and sand, the ocean and the beaches – our communal areas – may not look entirely familiar again to the many who’ve observed that famous Bondi seems so jarringly out of place 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 calling off holiday gathering plans. Reflective solitude will seem more appropriate.

But this is perhaps counterintuitively counterintuitive. For in these days of anxiety, outrage, melancholy, confusion and loss we need each other more than ever.

The reassurance 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 unity in public life and society will be hard to find this long, draining summer.