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As Australia settles into for a customary Christmas holiday during slow-moving days of coast and blistering heat set to the background of sporting matches and cicada song, this year the nation's summer mood seems, unfortunately, like no other.

It would be a dramatic oversimplification to characterize the national disposition after the antisemitic terrorist attack on Australian Jews during the beachside Hanukah festivities as one of mere ennui.

Throughout the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of the nation's urban centers – a tone of immediate shock, sorrow and horror is segueing to fury and deep polarization.

Those who had previously missed the often voiced concerns 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 antisemitism 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 mankind is so sorely depleted. This is especially so for those of us lucky never to have endured the animosity and fear of religious and ethnic persecution on this land or elsewhere.

And yet the social media feeds keep spewing at us the banal hot takes of those with blistering, divisive views but no sense at all of that profound fragility.

This is a time when I regret not having a stronger faith. I mourn, because having faith in humanity – in our capacity for kindness – has let us down so acutely. Something else, a greater power, is needed.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have seen such profound instances of human decency. The heroism of individuals. The selflessness of bystanders. Emergency personnel – police officers and medical staff, those who charged into the gunfire to help others, some publicly hailed but for the most part anonymous and unsung.

When the barrier cordon still fluttered wildly all about Bondi, the imperative of social, faith-based and ethnic unity was admirably promoted by faith leaders. It was a call of love and acceptance – of unifying rather than splitting apart in a time of antisemitic slaughter.

Consistent with the meaning of the Festival of Lights (illumination amid darkness), there was so much fitting reference of the need for lightness.

Togetherness, light and compassion was the essence of belief.

‘Our public places may not appear exactly as they did again.’

And yet elements of the Australian polity reacted so nauseatingly swiftly with fragmentation, finger-pointing and recrimination.

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

Observe the harmful message of division from veteran agitators of Australian racial division, capitalizing on the attack before the site was even cold. Then consider the words of political figures while the investigation was ongoing.

Government has a daunting job to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is grieving and scared and seeking the light and, importantly, explanations to so many questions.

Like why, when the official terror alert was assessed as likely, did such a significant open-air Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a woefully inadequate security presence? Like how could the accused attackers have multiple firearms in the family home when the security agency has so openly and repeatedly warned of the danger of targeted attacks?

How rapidly we were subjected to that cliched argument (or iterations of it) that it’s people not guns that cause death. Naturally, both things are true. It’s possible to simultaneously pursue new ways to stop hate-fuelled violence and prevent guns away from its potential perpetrators.

In this metropolis of immense splendor, of pristine azure skies above sea and sand, the ocean and the beaches – our communal areas – may not seem quite the same again to the many who’ve noted that iconic Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s horrific violence.

We yearn right now for understanding and significance, for family, and perhaps for the solace of beauty in culture or the natural world.

This weekend many Australians are calling off holiday gathering plans. Reflective solitude will seem 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 binding force of the unity in the very word – is what we likely need most.

But sadly, all of the portents are that cohesion in public life and the community will be elusive this long, draining summer.