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As the nation settles into for a customary Christmas holiday during languorous days of coast and blistering heat set to the background of Test cricket and insect sounds, this year the nation's summer atmosphere feels, unfortunately, like no other.

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

Across the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of the nation's urban centers – a tone of immediate surprise, sorrow and horror is shifting to fury and deep polarization.

Those who had not picked up on the frequently expressed fears of Australian Jews are now highly attuned. Similarly, they are sensitive to balancing the need for a far more urgent, energetic government and institutional fight against antisemitism with the right to demonstrate against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a moment for a countrywide dialogue, it is now, when our faith in mankind is so sorely diminished. This is especially so for those of us fortunate enough never to have endured the animosity and fear of faith-based 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, divisive stances but no sense at all of that terrifying vulnerability.

This is a time when I regret not having a greater faith. I mourn, because having faith in people – in our potential for compassion – has failed us so painfully. A different source, something higher, is needed.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have witnessed such extreme instances of human decency. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The selflessness of bystanders. First responders – law enforcement and paramedics, those who charged into the gunfire to aid others, some recognised but for the most part anonymous and unheralded.

When the barrier cordon still fluttered wildly all about Bondi, the imperative of social, religious and cultural solidarity was laudably championed by faith leaders. It was a call of compassion and tolerance – of bringing together rather than dividing in a time of targeted violence.

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

Togetherness, light and love was the essence of belief.

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

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

Some politicians moved straight for the pessimism, using the atrocity as a cynical opportunity to question Australia’s migration rules.

Witness the dangerous rhetoric of disunity from veteran agitators of Australian racial division, exploiting the massacre before the site was even cold. Then read the words of political figures while the investigation was ongoing.

Politics has a formidable task to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is grieving and frightened and seeking the hope and, not least, explanations to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the official terror alert was judged as likely, did such a large open-air Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a woefully insufficient security presence? Like how could the alleged killers have six guns in the family home when the security agency has so publicly and consistently warned of the danger of targeted attacks?

How rapidly we were treated to that tired line (or versions of it) that it’s people not weapons that kill. Of course, each point are valid. It’s feasible to simultaneously seek new ways to prevent violent bigotry and keep firearms away from its possible actors.

In this city of profound splendor, of pristine blue heavens above sea and shore, the water and the coastline – our shared community spaces – may not seem entirely familiar again to the many who’ve observed that famous Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s horrific violence.

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

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

But this is perhaps somewhat counterintuitive. For in these days of fear, outrage, sadness, bewilderment and loss we require 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 indicators are that unity in politics and the community will be elusive this extended, draining summer.