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While the nation settles into for a traditional Christmas holiday during slow-moving days of coast and blistering heat set to the background of sporting matches and cicada song, this year the nation's summer mood feels, sadly, like none before.

It would be a significant oversimplification to characterize the collective disposition after the anti-Jewish 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 iconically beautiful of the nation's urban centers – a tone of immediate surprise, grief and horror is segueing to anger and bitter division.

Those who had not picked up on the frequently expressed fears of Australian Jews are now highly attuned. Similarly, they are sensitive to reconciling the need for a much more immediate, energetic 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 diminished. This is especially so for those of us lucky never to have experienced the animosity and fear of faith-based targeting on this land or elsewhere.

And yet the social media feeds keep spewing at us the trite instant opinions of those with blistering, divisive views but no sense at all of that terrifying vulnerability.

This is a period when I regret not having a greater spiritual belief. I mourn, because believing in humanity – in our capacity for kindness – has failed us so acutely. 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 bravery of those present. Emergency personnel – law enforcement and paramedics, those who charged into the danger to aid fellow humans, some publicly hailed but for the most part anonymous and unsung.

When the barrier cordon still waved wildly all about Bondi, the imperative of community, faith-based and cultural solidarity was admirably championed by faith leaders. It was a message of love and tolerance – of bringing together rather than splitting apart in a moment of targeted violence.

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

Unity, light and love was the message of faith.

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

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

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

Observe the dangerous rhetoric of division from longstanding agitators of societal discord, exploiting the attack before the crime scene was even cold. Then consider the words of leadership aspirants while the investigation was ongoing.

Politics has a daunting job to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is grieving and frightened and seeking the light and, not least, answers to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the official terror alert was assessed as probable, did such a significant open-air Hanukah event go ahead with such a grossly insufficient protection? Like how could the accused attackers have multiple firearms in the family home when the security agency has so openly and consistently alerted of the threat of targeted attacks?

How rapidly we were treated to that tired argument (or versions of it) that it’s individuals not weapons that kill. Of course, each point are valid. It’s possible to at the same time seek new ways to stop hate-fuelled violence and keep firearms away from its possible actors.

In this city of immense beauty, of pristine blue heavens above ocean and sand, the water and the beaches – our shared community spaces – may not seem quite the same again to the many who’ve noted that famous Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s obscene bloodshed.

We yearn right now for understanding and significance, for family, and perhaps for the solace of aesthetics in art or the natural world.

This weekend many Australians are cancelling holiday gathering plans. Quiet contemplation will seem more in order.

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

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

But sadly, all of the portents are that unity in public life and the community will be elusive this long, enervating summer.