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While the nation winds down for a customary Christmas holiday across languorous days of coast and blistering heat accompanied by the background of sporting matches and cicada song, this year the country’s summer mood feels, sadly, like no other.

It would be a dramatic understatement to describe the collective temperament after the anti-Jewish terrorist attack on Jewish Australians during Bondi Hanukah festivities as one of simple discontent.

Across the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of the nation's urban centers – a tenor of initial surprise, grief and horror is segueing to anger and bitter polarization.

Those who had previously missed the frequently expressed concerns of Australian Jews are now acutely aware. Similarly, they are sensitive to balancing the need for a much more immediate, energetic government and institutional fight against anti-Jewish hatred with the freedom to demonstrate against genocide.

If ever there was a time for a countrywide dialogue, it is now, when our faith in mankind is so deeply diminished. This is especially so for those of us fortunate enough never to have experienced the animosity and fear of faith-based targeting on this land or anywhere else.

And yet the algorithms keep churning out at us the trite hot takes of those with inflammatory, divisive stances but no sense at all of that profound vulnerability.

This is a time when I lament not having a stronger faith. I lament, because believing in humanity – in mankind’s capacity for kindness – has let us down so acutely. A different source, a greater power, is required.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have witnessed such profound instances of human decency. The heroism of individuals. The bravery of those present. First responders – law enforcement and medical staff, those who ran towards the gunfire to help others, some recognised but for the most part unnamed and unsung.

When the barrier cordon still waved in the wind all about Bondi, the imperative of social, religious and cultural unity was laudably promoted by faith leaders. It was a message of compassion and tolerance – of bringing together rather than dividing in a moment of antisemitic slaughter.

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

Unity, hope and compassion was the essence of belief.

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

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

Some politicians gravitated straight for the pessimism, using tragedy as a calculating chance to question Australia’s migration rules.

Witness the dangerous rhetoric of disunity from longstanding agitators of societal discord, capitalizing on the massacre before the site 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 uniting a nation that is grieving and frightened and seeking the light and, not least, answers to so many questions.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was judged as probable, did such a large open-air Hanukah event go ahead with such a woefully insufficient security presence? Like how could the alleged killers have six guns in the residence when the domestic intelligence organisation has so openly and repeatedly warned of the threat of targeted attacks?

How quickly we were subjected to that cliched line (or iterations of it) that it’s people not weapons that kill. Of course, both things are true. It’s feasible to simultaneously seek new ways to stop hate-fuelled violence and keep firearms away from its potential perpetrators.

In this city of immense beauty, of clear azure skies above ocean and sand, the water and the coastline – our communal areas – may not seem entirely familiar again to the many who’ve noted that famous Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s horrific bloodshed.

We long right now for comprehension and significance, for family, and perhaps for the consolation of aesthetics in culture or nature.

This weekend many Australians are cancelling Christmas party plans. Reflective solitude will feel more in order.

But this is perhaps somewhat counterintuitive. For in these days of fear, outrage, melancholy, confusion and loss we require each other more than ever.

The comfort 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 elusive this extended, draining summer.