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As the nation winds down for a customary Christmas holiday during languorous days of coast and scorching heat accompanied by the background of Test cricket and insect sounds, this year the nation's summer mood seems, sadly, like no other.

It would be a dramatic oversimplification to characterize 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 nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of the nation's urban centers – a tone of immediate shock, sorrow and terror is segueing to anger and deep division.

Those who had previously missed the often voiced concerns of Australian Jews are now highly attuned. Similarly, they are attuned to balancing the need for a much more immediate, vigorous government and institutional crackdown 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 humanity is so deeply diminished. This is especially so for those of us fortunate enough never to have endured the animosity and fear of religious and ethnic persecution on this land or elsewhere.

And yet the social media feeds keep spewing at us the trite instant opinions of those with blistering, polarizing stances but little understanding at all of that profound vulnerability.

This is a period when I regret not having a stronger faith. I mourn, because having faith in people – in mankind’s potential for kindness – has failed us so acutely. A different source, something higher, is required.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have witnessed such extreme instances of human decency. The heroism of individuals. The bravery of those present. Emergency personnel – police officers and medical staff, those who ran towards the gunfire to aid fellow humans, some publicly hailed but for the most part anonymous and unheralded.

When the police tape still fluttered in the wind all about Bondi, the imperative of social, religious and ethnic solidarity was admirably promoted by faith leaders. It was a message of love and acceptance – of bringing together rather than dividing in a moment of antisemitic slaughter.

In keeping with the meaning of the Festival of Lights (illumination amid darkness), there was so much appropriate reference of the need for lightness.

Unity, hope and love was the message of belief.

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

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

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

Observe the dangerous rhetoric of disunity from longstanding agitators of Australian racial division, capitalizing on the attack before the site was even cold. Then consider the words of political figures while the probe was still active.

Government has a daunting job to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is mourning and scared and looking for the hope and, importantly, explanations to so many questions.

Like why, when the official terror alert was assessed as probable, did such a significant public Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a woefully inadequate security presence? Like how could the alleged killers have multiple firearms in the residence when the security agency has so publicly and consistently warned of the threat of targeted attacks?

How rapidly we were subjected to that tired line (or iterations of it) that it’s individuals not weapons that cause death. Of course, each point are valid. It’s possible to simultaneously pursue new ways to prevent hate-fuelled violence and prevent guns away from its potential perpetrators.

In this metropolis of profound splendor, of pristine blue heavens above sea and shore, the water and the coastline – our shared community spaces – may not seem quite the same again to the multitude who’ve noted that famous Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s obscene bloodshed.

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

This weekend many Australians are cancelling Christmas party plans. Reflective solitude will seem more appropriate.

But this is perhaps counterintuitively counterintuitive. For in these times of anxiety, anger, melancholy, bewilderment and loss we require each other now more than ever.

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

But tragically, all of the portents are that cohesion in politics and society will be hard to find this long, enervating summer.