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As the nation winds down for a traditional Christmas holiday across languorous days of beach and blistering heat accompanied by the soundtrack of Test cricket and cicada song, this year the country’s summer atmosphere feels, unfortunately, like none before.

It would be a dramatic oversimplification to characterize the national temperament after the anti-Jewish terrorist attack on Jewish Australians during the beachside Hanukah celebrations as one of mere ennui.

Across the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of the nation's urban centers – a tenor of initial surprise, sorrow and terror is shifting to anger and deep polarization.

Those who had not picked up on the often voiced concerns of the Jewish community are now highly attuned. Similarly, they are attuned to reconciling the need for a much more immediate, vigorous official crackdown against antisemitism with the right to peacefully protest against genocide.

If ever there was a time for a countrywide dialogue, it is now, when our faith in humanity 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 persecution on this land or anywhere else.

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

This is a period when I regret not having a greater faith. I lament, because believing in people – in mankind’s potential for compassion – has failed us so painfully. A different source, something higher, is required.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have witnessed such profound examples of human decency. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The bravery of those present. Emergency personnel – law enforcement and paramedics, those who charged into the danger to help fellow humans, some recognised but for the most part anonymous and unsung.

When the barrier cordon still waved wildly all about Bondi, the necessity of community, religious and cultural solidarity was admirably championed by religious figures. It was a message of love and acceptance – of unifying rather than splitting apart in a moment of antisemitic slaughter.

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

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 Australian polity responded so nauseatingly quickly with division, finger-pointing and accusation.

Some elected officials moved straight for the darkness, using tragedy as a calculating chance to challenge Australia’s immigration policies.

Witness the harmful rhetoric of disunity from longstanding agitators of Australian racial division, capitalizing on the attack before the crime scene was even cold. Then read the statements of leadership aspirants while the probe was still active.

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

Like why, when the official terror alert was assessed as probable, did such a significant open-air Hanukah event go ahead with such a woefully inadequate security presence? Like how could the accused attackers have multiple firearms in the family home when the domestic intelligence organisation has so publicly and consistently warned of the danger of targeted attacks?

How rapidly we were subjected to that tired argument (or versions of it) that it’s individuals not guns that kill. Of course, both things are valid. It’s possible to simultaneously pursue new ways to stop hate-fuelled violence and keep guns away from its potential perpetrators.

In this metropolis of profound beauty, of clear blue heavens above sea and sand, the ocean and the coastline – our shared community spaces – 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 long right now for comprehension and significance, for loved ones, and perhaps for the consolation of aesthetics in culture or nature.

This weekend many Australians are cancelling Christmas party plans. Quiet contemplation will seem more in order.

But this is perhaps counterintuitively counterintuitive. For in these times of anxiety, anger, melancholy, confusion and grief we need each other now more than ever.

The comfort 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 elusive this extended, draining summer.