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While the nation winds down for a traditional Christmas holiday during slow-moving days of beach and blistering heat set to the soundtrack of sporting matches and cicada song, this year the country’s summer mood seems, sadly, like none before.

It would be a significant understatement to characterize the national disposition after the antisemitic terrorist attack on Australian Jews during Bondi Hanukah festivities as one of mere discontent.

Throughout the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of the nation's urban centers – a tone of immediate surprise, sorrow and terror is shifting to fury and deep division.

Those who had previously missed the frequently expressed concerns of the Jewish community are now highly attuned. Just as, they are sensitive to reconciling the need for a much more immediate, vigorous 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 humanity is so sorely depleted. This is especially so for those of us lucky never to have experienced the animosity and dread of faith-based persecution on this land or anywhere else.

And yet the algorithms keep spewing at us the trite hot takes of those with blistering, polarizing stances but little understanding at all of that profound fragility.

This is a period when I regret not having a greater spiritual belief. I mourn, because believing in people – in our capacity for kindness – has let us down so acutely. Something else, something higher, is required.

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 – police officers and paramedics, those who ran towards the danger to aid fellow humans, some publicly hailed but for the most part unnamed and unsung.

When the police tape still fluttered wildly all about Bondi, the imperative of community, religious and ethnic unity was admirably promoted by faith leaders. It was a message of compassion and acceptance – of unifying rather than dividing in a moment of targeted violence.

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

Togetherness, hope and compassion was the essence of belief.

‘Our shared community spaces may not appear quite the same again.’

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

Some elected officials moved straight for the darkness, using the atrocity as a calculating chance to question Australia’s migration rules.

Observe the harmful rhetoric of division from longstanding agitators of Australian racial division, capitalizing on the attack before the crime scene was even cold. Then read the words of political figures while the investigation was still active.

Government 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, explanations to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was assessed as likely, did such a significant open-air Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a woefully inadequate protection? Like how could the alleged killers have multiple firearms in the residence when the security agency has so openly and consistently warned of the threat of targeted attacks?

How rapidly we were treated to that tired line (or versions of it) that it’s people not weapons that cause death. Naturally, each point are valid. It’s feasible to simultaneously seek new ways to prevent hate-fuelled violence and keep guns away from its possible perpetrators.

In this metropolis of profound beauty, of pristine azure skies above ocean and sand, the water and the coastline – our communal areas – may not look entirely familiar again to the many who’ve noted that iconic Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s horrific bloodshed.

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

This weekend many Australians are calling off Christmas party plans. Quiet contemplation will seem more in order.

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

The comfort of community – the human glue of the unity in the very word – is what we likely need most.

But sadly, all of the indicators are that cohesion in public life and society will be elusive this extended, draining summer.