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As Australia winds down for a traditional Christmas holiday across languorous days of coast and scorching heat set to the soundtrack of sporting matches and cicada song, this year the country’s summer mood seems, unfortunately, like no other.

It would be a significant understatement to characterize the collective disposition after the antisemitic terrorist attack on Jewish Australians during Bondi Hanukah festivities as one of simple ennui.

Across the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of the nation's urban centers – a tone of immediate shock, grief and horror is shifting to fury 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 attuned to balancing the need for a much more immediate, vigorous government and institutional crackdown against antisemitism with the right to peacefully protest against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a moment for a countrywide dialogue, it is now, when our faith in mankind is so sorely depleted. This is particularly so for those of us lucky never to have endured the animosity and fear of religious and ethnic targeting on this continent or anywhere else.

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

This is a period when I regret not having a greater spiritual belief. I mourn, because believing in humanity – in mankind’s potential for kindness – has failed us so acutely. A different source, a greater power, is needed.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have witnessed such extreme examples of human goodness. The heroism of individuals. The bravery of those present. Emergency personnel – police officers and paramedics, those who charged into the danger to help fellow humans, some recognised but for the most part unnamed and unheralded.

When the police tape still fluttered wildly all about Bondi, the imperative of community, faith-based and ethnic solidarity was laudably championed by religious figures. It was a message of love and tolerance – of unifying rather than dividing in a moment of targeted violence.

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

Unity, hope and compassion was the essence 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 recrimination.

Some elected officials moved straight for the pessimism, using the atrocity as a calculating chance to challenge Australia’s immigration policies.

Witness the harmful rhetoric of disunity from longstanding fomenters of Australian racial division, exploiting the attack before the site was even cold. Then consider the words of political figures while the probe was still active.

Politics has a daunting task to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is mourning and frightened and looking for the hope and, not least, explanations to so many questions.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was assessed as probable, did such a large public Hanukah event 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 publicly and consistently warned of the danger of targeted attacks?

How rapidly we were subjected to that cliched argument (or versions of it) that it’s individuals not guns that cause death. Of course, both things are valid. It’s possible to simultaneously seek new ways to prevent hate-fuelled violence and prevent guns away from its potential actors.

In this metropolis of profound splendor, of pristine azure skies above sea and sand, the water and the coastline – our shared community spaces – may not look entirely familiar again to the many who’ve observed that iconic Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s horrific bloodshed.

We long right now for understanding and meaning, for family, and perhaps for the consolation of beauty in culture or nature.

This weekend many Australians are cancelling holiday gathering plans. Quiet contemplation will feel more appropriate.

But this is perhaps somewhat counterintuitive. For in these days of anxiety, anger, sadness, bewilderment and loss we require each other 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 unity in politics and the community will be hard to find this long, enervating summer.