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While the nation winds down for a customary Christmas holiday during slow-moving days of beach and blistering heat set to the background of sporting matches and insect sounds, this year the nation's summer atmosphere feels, unfortunately, like no other.

It would be a significant oversimplification to characterize the national disposition after the anti-Jewish terrorist attack on Australian Jews during Bondi Hanukah celebrations as one of mere ennui.

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

Those who had not picked up on the often voiced fears of Australian Jews are now highly attuned. Just as, they are sensitive to balancing the need for a much more immediate, vigorous official crackdown against anti-Jewish hatred with the right to peacefully protest against mass atrocities.

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

And yet the algorithms keep churning out at us the trite instant opinions of those with blistering, polarizing stances but no sense at all of that terrifying vulnerability.

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

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have witnessed such extreme instances of human decency. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The selflessness of bystanders. Emergency personnel – police officers and paramedics, those who charged into the gunfire to aid fellow humans, some publicly hailed but for the most part unnamed and unheralded.

When the barrier cordon still waved wildly all about Bondi, the imperative of community, religious and cultural unity was admirably promoted by religious figures. It was a message of compassion and tolerance – of bringing together rather than splitting apart in a moment of targeted violence.

In keeping with the symbolism of the Festival of Lights (illumination amid darkness), there was so much fitting evocation of the need for hope.

Togetherness, hope and love was the message of faith.

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

And yet elements of the political landscape reacted so nauseatingly quickly with fragmentation, blame and accusation.

Some politicians gravitated straight for the darkness, using the atrocity as a calculating chance to challenge Australia’s migration rules.

Observe the dangerous rhetoric of disunity from veteran agitators of societal discord, capitalizing on the attack before the site was even cold. Then read the statements of political figures while the investigation was still active.

Government has a formidable job to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is grieving 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 likely, did such a significant public Hanukah event go ahead with such a woefully inadequate protection? Like how could the accused attackers have six guns in the family home when the security agency has so openly and consistently alerted of the threat of antisemitic violence?

How rapidly we were treated to that cliched line (or versions of it) that it’s people not weapons that kill. Of course, both things are valid. It’s feasible to simultaneously pursue new ways to stop violent bigotry and prevent guns away from its potential actors.

In this city of profound splendor, of clear azure skies above sea and shore, the water and the coastline – our communal areas – may not seem quite the same again to the many who’ve observed that iconic Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s horrific violence.

We long right now for understanding and meaning, for family, and perhaps for the solace of beauty 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 against instinct. For in these times of anxiety, outrage, melancholy, confusion and grief we need each other more than ever.

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

But tragically, all of the indicators are that cohesion in politics and the community will be elusive this extended, draining summer.