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While the nation settles into for a customary Christmas holiday during languorous days of coast and blistering heat accompanied by the soundtrack of Test cricket and insect sounds, this year the nation's summer atmosphere feels, unfortunately, like none before.

It would be a significant understatement to describe the collective temperament after the anti-Jewish terrorist attack on Australian Jews during Bondi Hanukah celebrations as one of mere ennui.

Throughout the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of Australian cities – a tone of initial surprise, sorrow and horror is shifting to fury and bitter division.

Those who had previously missed the often voiced concerns of Australian Jews are now acutely aware. Similarly, they are sensitive to balancing the need for a much more immediate, vigorous official fight against antisemitism 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 diminished. This is particularly so for those of us fortunate enough never to have endured the animosity and dread of faith-based targeting on this continent or elsewhere.

And yet the social media feeds keep spewing at us the trite hot takes of those with blistering, divisive views but little understanding at all of that profound vulnerability.

This is a period when I regret not having a stronger faith. I mourn, because believing in people – in our capacity for compassion – has failed us so painfully. A different source, a greater power, is needed.

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. First responders – law enforcement and paramedics, those who ran towards the gunfire to aid others, some recognised but for the most part unnamed and unsung.

When the police tape still fluttered wildly all about Bondi, the necessity of social, religious and cultural solidarity was admirably championed by faith leaders. It was a call of love and acceptance – of bringing together rather than splitting apart in a moment of antisemitic slaughter.

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

Togetherness, light and compassion was the message of faith.

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

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

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

Observe the dangerous message of disunity from longstanding fomenters of societal discord, capitalizing on the attack before the site was even cold. Then read the statements of political figures while the investigation was ongoing.

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

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was judged as likely, did such a significant open-air Hanukah event go ahead with such a grossly inadequate security presence? Like how could the accused attackers have six guns in the family home when the security agency has so publicly and consistently warned of the danger of antisemitic violence?

How quickly we were subjected to that tired line (or iterations of it) that it’s people not guns that cause death. Naturally, each point are true. It’s feasible to at the same time seek new ways to stop violent bigotry and keep guns away from its potential perpetrators.

In this metropolis of profound splendor, of pristine azure skies above sea and shore, the ocean and the beaches – our shared community spaces – may not seem entirely familiar again to the many who’ve noted 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 aesthetics in culture or nature.

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

But this is perhaps somewhat against instinct. For in these times of fear, outrage, melancholy, confusion and loss we need each other more than ever.

The reassurance of community – the binding force of the unity in the very word – is what we probably need most.

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