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While the nation winds down for a customary Christmas holiday during languorous days of coast and scorching heat set to the background of Test cricket and cicada song, this year the nation's summer atmosphere feels, sadly, like none before.

It would be a significant oversimplification to describe the collective temperament after the antisemitic terrorist attack on Jewish Australians during Bondi Hanukah celebrations as one of mere discontent.

Across the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of Australian cities – a tenor of immediate shock, sorrow and terror is segueing to anger and deep polarization.

Those who had not picked up on the often voiced fears of Australian Jews are now highly attuned. Just as, they are sensitive to reconciling the need for a much more immediate, energetic government and institutional fight against anti-Jewish hatred with the right to peacefully protest against genocide.

If ever there was a moment for a countrywide dialogue, it is now, when our belief in humanity is so deeply diminished. This is especially so for those of us fortunate enough never to have experienced the animosity and dread of faith-based targeting on this continent or elsewhere.

And yet the algorithms keep churning out at us the banal instant opinions of those with inflammatory, divisive views but little understanding at all of that profound fragility.

This is a period when I regret not having a greater faith. I lament, because believing in people – in our potential for compassion – has failed us so acutely. Something else, something higher, is needed.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have witnessed such extreme examples of human goodness. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The bravery of those present. First responders – law enforcement and paramedics, those who charged into the danger to aid others, some recognised but for the most part anonymous and unsung.

When the police tape still fluttered in the wind all about Bondi, the necessity of community, faith-based and ethnic unity was laudably promoted by faith leaders. It was a call of love and tolerance – of unifying rather than splitting apart in a time of targeted violence.

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

Unity, hope and love was the message of belief.

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

And yet segments of the political landscape responded so nauseatingly quickly with division, finger-pointing and accusation.

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

Witness the harmful message of disunity from veteran fomenters of Australian racial division, capitalizing on the massacre before the crime scene was even cold. Then consider the words of political figures while the probe was still active.

Government has a daunting job to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is grieving and frightened and seeking the light and, not least, explanations to so many questions.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was judged as probable, did such a significant public Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a woefully inadequate security presence? Like how could the alleged killers have multiple firearms in the residence when the domestic intelligence organisation has so publicly and repeatedly warned of the danger of antisemitic violence?

How quickly we were subjected to that tired argument (or iterations of it) that it’s individuals not guns that kill. Naturally, both things are true. It’s feasible to simultaneously pursue new ways to prevent violent bigotry and prevent guns away from its possible perpetrators.

In this metropolis of immense beauty, of clear azure skies above ocean and sand, the water and the coastline – our shared community spaces – may not seem quite the same again to the multitude who’ve noted that iconic Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s horrific violence.

We yearn 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 calling off Christmas party plans. Quiet contemplation will feel more appropriate.

But this is perhaps somewhat counterintuitive. For in these times of anxiety, anger, melancholy, confusion and loss we need each other more than ever.

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

But sadly, all of the indicators are that cohesion in politics and the community will be elusive this extended, enervating summer.