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As Australia winds down for a traditional Christmas holiday across languorous days of beach and scorching heat accompanied by the background of sporting matches and cicada song, this year the country’s summer atmosphere seems, unfortunately, like none before.

It would be a significant understatement to characterize the national disposition after the anti-Jewish terrorist attack on Jewish Australians during the beachside Hanukah festivities as one of mere discontent.

Throughout the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of the nation's urban centers – a tone of immediate surprise, sorrow and terror is segueing to anger and bitter division.

Those who had previously missed the frequently expressed concerns of the Jewish community are now acutely aware. Just as, they are attuned to reconciling the need for a far more urgent, vigorous government and institutional 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 depleted. This is especially so for those of us fortunate enough never to have endured the hatred and fear of religious and ethnic targeting on this land or anywhere else.

And yet the algorithms keep spewing at us the banal instant opinions of those with blistering, polarizing stances but little understanding at all of that profound vulnerability.

This is a time when I regret not having a stronger spiritual belief. I mourn, because believing in people – in mankind’s capacity for compassion – has let us down so acutely. Something else, a greater power, is needed.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have seen such extreme examples of human decency. The heroism of individuals. The bravery of those present. First responders – law enforcement and paramedics, those who ran towards the gunfire to aid others, some recognised but for the most part unnamed and unsung.

When the police tape still fluttered in the wind all about Bondi, the imperative of community, religious and ethnic solidarity was laudably championed by faith leaders. It was a message of compassion and acceptance – of bringing together rather than splitting apart in a moment of antisemitic slaughter.

In keeping with the meaning of Hanukah (light amid darkness), there was so much appropriate reference of the need for hope.

Unity, light and love was the essence of faith.

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

And yet elements of the Australian polity reacted so nauseatingly quickly with fragmentation, finger-pointing and accusation.

Some elected officials gravitated straight for the darkness, using tragedy as a cynical chance to question Australia’s migration rules.

Observe the dangerous message of division from veteran fomenters of Australian racial division, exploiting the attack before the crime scene was even cold. Then read the statements of leadership aspirants while the investigation was still active.

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

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was assessed as probable, did such a significant open-air 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 consistently warned of the threat of antisemitic violence?

How quickly we were treated to that tired argument (or iterations of it) that it’s individuals not guns that kill. Of course, both things are valid. It’s feasible to at the same time pursue new ways to stop violent bigotry and prevent firearms away from its potential perpetrators.

In this city of immense splendor, of pristine blue heavens above ocean and shore, the ocean and the coastline – our communal areas – may not look entirely familiar again to the multitude who’ve noted that iconic Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s horrific bloodshed.

We yearn right now for understanding and meaning, for loved ones, and perhaps for the solace of aesthetics in culture or the natural world.

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

But this is perhaps counterintuitively counterintuitive. For in these times of anxiety, anger, melancholy, bewilderment and grief we need each other now more than ever.

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

But tragically, all of the portents are that cohesion in public life and the community will be hard to find this long, draining summer.