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While the nation winds down for a traditional Christmas holiday across slow-moving days of beach and scorching heat set to the soundtrack of sporting matches and cicada song, this year the nation's summer atmosphere feels, sadly, like no other.

It would be a significant understatement to describe the national disposition after the anti-Jewish terrorist attack on Jewish Australians during the beachside Hanukah celebrations as one of simple ennui.

Throughout the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of Australian cities – a tone of initial surprise, grief and terror is segueing to fury and bitter division.

Those who had not picked up on the often voiced concerns of Australian Jews are now acutely aware. Just as, they are attuned to balancing the need for a much more immediate, vigorous official crackdown against antisemitism with the right to peacefully protest against genocide.

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 animosity and dread of religious and ethnic persecution on this land or anywhere else.

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

This is a period when I regret not having a stronger faith. I mourn, because believing 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 seen such extreme examples of human decency. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The bravery of those present. First responders – law enforcement and paramedics, those who charged into the danger to aid others, some recognised but for the most part anonymous and unsung.

When the police tape still waved wildly all about Bondi, the necessity of community, religious and cultural unity was admirably promoted by faith leaders. It was a message of compassion and tolerance – of bringing together rather than splitting apart in a time of antisemitic slaughter.

In keeping with the meaning of Hanukah (illumination amid gloom), there was so much fitting reference of the need for hope.

Unity, light and compassion was the essence of belief.

‘Our shared community spaces may not look exactly as they did again.’

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

Some politicians gravitated straight for the pessimism, using the atrocity as a calculating opportunity to challenge Australia’s immigration policies.

Witness the dangerous rhetoric of division from longstanding agitators of Australian racial division, exploiting the attack before the crime scene was even cold. Then read the words of leadership aspirants while the investigation was ongoing.

Politics has a daunting job to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is mourning 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 accused attackers have six guns in the family home when the security agency has so publicly and consistently alerted of the danger of targeted attacks?

How rapidly we were treated to that tired line (or iterations of it) that it’s individuals not weapons that kill. Of course, both things are true. It’s feasible to simultaneously pursue new ways to stop violent bigotry and prevent firearms away from its possible actors.

In this city of immense beauty, of clear azure skies above sea and sand, the ocean and the beaches – our shared community spaces – may not seem entirely familiar again to the multitude who’ve observed that iconic Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s horrific bloodshed.

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

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 times of fear, anger, melancholy, bewilderment and grief we need each other 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 indicators are that unity in public life and the community will be elusive this extended, enervating summer.