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As the nation settles into for a customary Christmas holiday across slow-moving days of coast and scorching heat set to the soundtrack of Test cricket and cicada song, this year the nation's summer atmosphere feels, sadly, like no other.

It would be a significant oversimplification to describe the collective disposition after the antisemitic terrorist attack on Australian Jews during the beachside Hanukah festivities as one of simple discontent.

Across the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of Australian cities – a tone of immediate surprise, sorrow and terror is shifting to anger and bitter division.

Those who had previously missed the often voiced concerns of Australian Jews are now acutely aware. Similarly, they are attuned to reconciling the need for a much more immediate, vigorous government and institutional crackdown against anti-Jewish hatred with the right to peacefully protest against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a time for a countrywide dialogue, it is now, when our belief in humanity is so sorely depleted. This is especially so for those of us fortunate enough never to have endured the animosity and dread of faith-based targeting on this land or anywhere else.

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

This is a period when I regret not having a greater faith. I mourn, because believing in people – in our capacity for kindness – has failed us so acutely. Something else, 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 danger to help fellow humans, some recognised but for the most part anonymous and unheralded.

When the police tape still fluttered wildly all about Bondi, the imperative of community, faith-based and ethnic unity was admirably promoted by religious figures. It was a call of compassion and acceptance – of bringing together rather than dividing in a time of targeted violence.

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

Unity, 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 quickly with fragmentation, finger-pointing and recrimination.

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

Observe the dangerous rhetoric of disunity from longstanding fomenters of societal discord, capitalizing on the massacre before the site was even cold. Then read the statements of political figures while the probe was still active.

Politics has a formidable job to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is grieving and scared and seeking the light and, not least, answers to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the official terror alert was assessed as likely, did such a large public Hanukah event go ahead with such a grossly inadequate protection? Like how could the alleged killers have multiple firearms in the family home when the domestic intelligence organisation has so publicly and consistently alerted of the threat of antisemitic violence?

How quickly we were treated to that tired argument (or iterations of it) that it’s people not weapons that kill. Naturally, both things are true. It’s possible to at the same time pursue new ways to stop hate-fuelled violence and prevent guns away from its possible perpetrators.

In this city of profound beauty, of clear blue heavens above ocean and sand, the water and the beaches – our communal areas – may not look quite the same again to the many who’ve noted that iconic Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s horrific violence.

We yearn right now for comprehension and significance, for loved ones, and perhaps for the solace of aesthetics in art or the natural world.

This weekend many Australians are cancelling holiday gathering plans. Reflective solitude will seem more in order.

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

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

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