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As Australia settles into for a customary Christmas holiday across languorous days of beach and blistering heat set to the background of sporting matches and cicada song, this year the nation's summer atmosphere feels, unfortunately, like none before.

It would be a dramatic understatement to describe the collective temperament after the antisemitic 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 iconically beautiful of Australian cities – a tenor of initial shock, grief and horror is segueing to anger and deep polarization.

Those who had not picked up on the often voiced concerns of Australian Jews are now highly attuned. Similarly, they are attuned to balancing the need for a much more immediate, vigorous official crackdown against antisemitism with the right to demonstrate against genocide.

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

And yet the algorithms keep spewing at us the banal instant opinions of those with blistering, divisive views but little understanding at all of that terrifying vulnerability.

This is a period when I regret not having a greater faith. I lament, because having faith in humanity – in mankind’s potential for compassion – has failed us so painfully. Something else, something higher, is needed.

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. Emergency personnel – law enforcement and medical staff, those who ran towards the danger to aid 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 community, religious and cultural unity was laudably championed by faith leaders. It was a message of compassion and tolerance – of bringing together rather than splitting apart in a time of targeted violence.

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

Unity, light and compassion was the message of faith.

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

And yet elements of the political landscape reacted so disgustingly quickly with division, finger-pointing and accusation.

Some elected officials gravitated straight for the pessimism, using the atrocity as a calculating opportunity to question Australia’s immigration policies.

Observe the dangerous rhetoric of disunity from veteran agitators of societal discord, capitalizing on the massacre before the site was even cold. Then read the words of political figures 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 hope and, not least, explanations to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the official terror alert was assessed as probable, did such a large public Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a woefully insufficient protection? Like how could the alleged killers have multiple firearms in the residence when the security agency has so publicly and repeatedly warned of the danger of targeted attacks?

How rapidly we were treated to that tired line (or versions of it) that it’s individuals not guns that cause death. Of course, each point are valid. It’s feasible to at the same time seek new ways to prevent hate-fuelled violence and keep guns away from its possible actors.

In this city of profound splendor, of clear blue heavens above ocean and sand, the ocean and the beaches – our shared community spaces – may not look quite the same again to the many who’ve noted that iconic Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s obscene bloodshed.

We yearn right now for understanding and meaning, for family, and perhaps for the consolation of aesthetics in art or the natural world.

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

But this is perhaps counterintuitively against instinct. For in these times of fear, anger, sadness, bewilderment and loss we require each other more than ever.

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

But tragically, all of the indicators are that cohesion in politics and the community will be elusive this long, draining summer.