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While Australia settles into for a traditional Christmas holiday during languorous days of beach and blistering heat set to the soundtrack of sporting matches and cicada song, this year the nation's summer atmosphere feels, unfortunately, like none before.

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

Throughout the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of the nation's urban centers – a tenor of initial surprise, grief and horror is segueing to anger and bitter division.

Those who had not picked up on the frequently expressed concerns of the Jewish community are now acutely aware. Just as, they are attuned to balancing the need for a far more urgent, energetic government and institutional fight against antisemitism with the freedom to demonstrate against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a time for a countrywide dialogue, it is now, when our belief in mankind is so deeply diminished. This is especially so for those of us fortunate enough never to have endured the hatred and dread of religious and ethnic persecution on this land or anywhere else.

And yet the algorithms 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 time when I regret not having a stronger spiritual belief. I lament, because believing in people – in mankind’s capacity for compassion – has failed us so painfully. Something else, a greater power, is required.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have witnessed such profound examples of human decency. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The selflessness of bystanders. Emergency personnel – police officers and medical staff, those who ran towards the danger to aid fellow humans, some recognised but for the most part unnamed and unsung.

When the barrier cordon still waved in the wind all about Bondi, the necessity of community, faith-based and ethnic solidarity was admirably promoted by religious figures. It was a message of love and tolerance – of bringing together rather than dividing in a time of targeted violence.

Consistent with the symbolism of the Festival of Lights (illumination amid gloom), there was so much appropriate evocation of the need for lightness.

Unity, light and compassion was the message of faith.

‘Our public places may not look quite the same again.’

And yet elements of the Australian polity responded so nauseatingly quickly with division, blame and recrimination.

Some politicians gravitated straight for the darkness, using tragedy as a cynical chance to challenge Australia’s immigration policies.

Witness the dangerous message of disunity from veteran fomenters of societal discord, exploiting the attack before the site was even cold. Then consider the statements of political figures while the investigation was still active.

Politics has a formidable job to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is grieving and scared and looking for the hope and, not least, answers to so many questions.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was assessed as probable, did such a large open-air Hanukah event go ahead with such a grossly inadequate security presence? Like how could the alleged killers have six guns in the family home when the security agency has so publicly and repeatedly alerted of the danger of targeted attacks?

How rapidly we were treated to that tired argument (or iterations of it) that it’s individuals not weapons that cause death. Naturally, each point are true. It’s possible to simultaneously seek new ways to stop hate-fuelled violence and prevent firearms away from its possible perpetrators.

In this metropolis of immense splendor, of pristine blue heavens above sea and shore, the water and the beaches – our communal areas – may not seem entirely familiar again to the many who’ve observed that famous Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s horrific violence.

We long right now for comprehension and meaning, for loved ones, and perhaps for the consolation of aesthetics in art or the natural world.

This weekend many Australians are cancelling Christmas party plans. Reflective solitude will feel more in order.

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

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

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