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While Australia winds down for a traditional Christmas holiday across languorous days of coast and scorching heat set to the soundtrack of sporting matches and cicada song, this year the nation's summer atmosphere feels, sadly, like none before.

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

Throughout the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of Australian cities – a tone of immediate shock, sorrow and terror is shifting to fury and deep polarization.

Those who had previously missed the frequently expressed fears of Australian Jews are now highly attuned. Just as, they are attuned to balancing the need for a far more urgent, vigorous official crackdown against anti-Jewish hatred with the right to peacefully protest against genocide.

If ever there was a moment for a countrywide dialogue, it is now, when our faith in humanity is so sorely diminished. This is especially so for those of us lucky never to have experienced the animosity and fear of religious and ethnic targeting on this land or elsewhere.

And yet the social media feeds keep churning out at us the trite hot takes of those with blistering, polarizing stances but no sense at all of that profound vulnerability.

This is a time when I regret not having a stronger spiritual belief. I lament, because believing in people – in mankind’s potential for kindness – has let us down so acutely. A different source, a greater power, is needed.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have witnessed such profound examples of human goodness. The heroism of individuals. The selflessness of bystanders. Emergency personnel – police officers and paramedics, those who charged into the gunfire to help others, some recognised but for the most part unnamed and unheralded.

When the barrier cordon still waved in the wind all about Bondi, the imperative of community, faith-based and cultural unity was laudably promoted by religious figures. It was a message of compassion and acceptance – of unifying rather than dividing in a time of antisemitic slaughter.

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

Unity, light and compassion was the message of faith.

‘Our public places may not look quite the same again.’

And yet segments of the political landscape responded so nauseatingly swiftly with fragmentation, blame and accusation.

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

Witness the harmful rhetoric of division from veteran agitators of societal discord, exploiting the attack before the site was even cold. Then consider the statements of political figures while the investigation was ongoing.

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

Like why, when the official terror alert was assessed as likely, did such a large public Hanukah event 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 publicly and repeatedly alerted of the threat of targeted attacks?

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

In this metropolis of immense splendor, of pristine blue heavens above ocean and shore, the water and the coastline – our communal areas – may not look entirely familiar again to the many who’ve noted that iconic Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s horrific violence.

We yearn right now for comprehension and meaning, for loved ones, and perhaps for the consolation of beauty in art or the natural world.

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

But this is perhaps somewhat against instinct. For in these days of anxiety, anger, melancholy, bewilderment and grief we need each other now more than ever.

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

But sadly, all of the indicators are that unity in politics and society will be elusive this long, enervating summer.