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While the nation winds down for a customary Christmas holiday across slow-moving days of beach and blistering heat set to the soundtrack of Test cricket and insect sounds, this year the nation's summer atmosphere feels, sadly, like none before.

It would be a significant understatement to characterize the national disposition after the antisemitic terrorist attack on Australian Jews during Bondi Hanukah celebrations as one of mere discontent.

Throughout the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of Australian cities – a tone of immediate surprise, sorrow and horror is segueing to fury and deep polarization.

Those who had previously missed the frequently expressed concerns of Australian Jews are now highly attuned. Similarly, they are attuned to reconciling the need for a much more immediate, vigorous government and institutional fight against anti-Jewish hatred with the right to demonstrate against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a moment for a countrywide dialogue, it is now, when our belief in humanity is so sorely diminished. This is particularly so for those of us fortunate enough never to have experienced the hatred and fear of faith-based persecution on this continent or elsewhere.

And yet the algorithms keep churning out at us the trite hot takes of those with blistering, polarizing views but little understanding at all of that profound fragility.

This is a period when I lament not having a greater faith. I mourn, because having faith in humanity – in mankind’s capacity for compassion – has let us down so painfully. Something else, something higher, is needed.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have witnessed such profound examples of human goodness. The heroism of individuals. The bravery of those present. Emergency personnel – police officers and paramedics, those who ran towards the danger to aid others, some recognised but for the most part anonymous and unsung.

When the barrier cordon still fluttered in the wind all about Bondi, the necessity of community, religious and cultural solidarity was admirably promoted by faith leaders. It was a message of love and tolerance – of unifying rather than splitting apart in a time of antisemitic slaughter.

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

Unity, hope and compassion was the message of belief.

‘Our shared community spaces may not look quite the same again.’

And yet segments of the political landscape reacted so disgustingly swiftly with fragmentation, finger-pointing and accusation.

Some politicians moved straight for the darkness, using the atrocity as a calculating opportunity to question Australia’s immigration policies.

Observe the dangerous rhetoric of division from longstanding agitators of societal discord, capitalizing on the massacre before the site was even cold. Then read the statements of leadership aspirants while the investigation was ongoing.

Politics has a daunting task to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is grieving and scared and seeking the hope and, importantly, explanations to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was assessed as likely, did such a large public Hanukah event go ahead with such a grossly insufficient protection? Like how could the alleged killers have six guns in the residence when the domestic intelligence organisation has so openly and repeatedly warned of the danger of targeted attacks?

How quickly we were subjected to that tired line (or iterations of it) that it’s people not guns that kill. Of course, each point are valid. It’s feasible to simultaneously seek new ways to prevent hate-fuelled violence and keep guns away from its possible perpetrators.

In this city of immense beauty, of clear blue heavens above sea and shore, the water and the coastline – our communal areas – may not look quite the same again to the multitude who’ve noted that famous Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s obscene violence.

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

This weekend many Australians are calling off holiday gathering plans. Reflective solitude will seem more in order.

But this is perhaps counterintuitively counterintuitive. For in these days of anxiety, anger, sadness, bewilderment and grief we need each other now 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 portents are that cohesion in politics and society will be hard to find this long, draining summer.