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As Australia winds down for a traditional 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 seems, unfortunately, like none before.

It would be a dramatic understatement to characterize the national temperament after the antisemitic terrorist attack on Jewish Australians during the beachside Hanukah festivities as one of simple ennui.

Across the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of Australian cities – a tenor of immediate shock, sorrow and horror is shifting to fury and bitter division.

Those who had previously missed the often voiced concerns of Australian Jews are now acutely aware. Similarly, they are attuned to balancing the need for a far more urgent, energetic official fight against antisemitism with the right to demonstrate against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a time for a countrywide dialogue, it is now, when our faith in mankind is so deeply depleted. This is particularly so for those of us fortunate enough never to have experienced the hatred and dread of religious and ethnic targeting on this continent or anywhere else.

And yet the social media feeds keep spewing at us the trite hot takes of those with blistering, polarizing views but no sense at all of that profound fragility.

This is a time when I lament not having a stronger faith. I lament, because believing in humanity – in mankind’s capacity for compassion – has failed us so acutely. A different source, a greater power, is required.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have seen such extreme instances of human goodness. The heroism of individuals. The selflessness of bystanders. Emergency personnel – law enforcement and paramedics, those who charged into the danger to help others, some recognised but for the most part unnamed and unheralded.

When the police tape still waved in the wind all about Bondi, the imperative of social, religious and cultural solidarity was laudably promoted by religious figures. It was a message of love and acceptance – of unifying rather than dividing in a time of antisemitic slaughter.

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

Unity, hope and compassion was the message of belief.

‘Our public places may not appear exactly as they did again.’

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

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

Observe the dangerous message of disunity from veteran fomenters of Australian racial division, capitalizing on the massacre before the crime scene was even cold. Then consider the statements of political figures while the investigation was still active.

Government has a daunting job to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is grieving and scared and looking for the light and, importantly, answers to so many questions.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was judged as likely, did such a large open-air Hanukah event go ahead with such a woefully inadequate security presence? Like how could the accused attackers have six guns in the family home when the security agency has so openly and consistently warned of the danger of antisemitic violence?

How rapidly we were treated to that cliched argument (or versions of it) that it’s individuals not guns that cause death. Of course, each point are true. It’s possible to simultaneously seek new ways to prevent violent bigotry and keep firearms away from its possible actors.

In this metropolis of immense beauty, of pristine azure skies above sea and shore, the ocean and the coastline – our shared community spaces – may not look entirely familiar again to the many who’ve noted that famous Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s horrific bloodshed.

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

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

But this is perhaps somewhat against instinct. For in these days 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 likely need most.

But tragically, all of the portents are that cohesion in politics and the community will be hard to find this extended, enervating summer.