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While the nation winds down for a traditional Christmas holiday across languorous days of beach and scorching heat set to the background of sporting matches and insect sounds, this year the nation's summer mood seems, unfortunately, like no other.

It would be a significant oversimplification to characterize the national temperament after the antisemitic terrorist attack on Jewish Australians during the beachside Hanukah festivities as one of simple discontent.

Throughout the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of the nation's urban centers – a tenor of immediate shock, grief and terror is shifting to fury and deep division.

Those who had not picked up on the frequently expressed concerns of Australian Jews are now acutely aware. Just as, they are sensitive to balancing the need for a much more immediate, vigorous government and institutional fight against anti-Jewish hatred with the right to demonstrate against genocide.

If ever there was a time for a countrywide dialogue, it is now, when our faith in humanity is so deeply depleted. This is especially so for those of us fortunate enough never to have experienced the animosity and fear of religious and ethnic targeting on this land or elsewhere.

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

This is a time when I lament not having a greater spiritual belief. I lament, because having faith in humanity – in our capacity for kindness – has let us down so acutely. Something else, something higher, is needed.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have seen such profound instances of human goodness. The heroism of individuals. The bravery of those present. Emergency personnel – police officers and medical staff, those who ran towards the gunfire to help 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 social, religious and cultural solidarity was admirably promoted by religious figures. It was a message of compassion and acceptance – of bringing together rather than dividing in a time of antisemitic slaughter.

In keeping with the meaning of Hanukah (light amid darkness), there was so much fitting evocation of the need for hope.

Unity, light and compassion was the message of faith.

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

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

Some politicians moved straight for the pessimism, using tragedy as a calculating chance to question Australia’s immigration policies.

Witness the dangerous message of disunity from longstanding fomenters of Australian racial division, exploiting the massacre before the site was even cold. Then consider the statements of leadership aspirants while the probe was still active.

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

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was judged as probable, did such a significant open-air Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a woefully insufficient security presence? Like how could the accused attackers have multiple firearms in the residence when the security agency has so openly and repeatedly warned of the threat of targeted attacks?

How rapidly we were subjected to that cliched argument (or iterations of it) that it’s people not guns that cause death. Of course, both things are true. It’s feasible to at the same time pursue new ways to stop hate-fuelled violence and keep guns away from its potential actors.

In this city of profound splendor, of pristine blue heavens above sea and sand, the ocean and the coastline – our communal areas – may not look entirely familiar again to the multitude who’ve noted that famous Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s obscene violence.

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

This weekend many Australians are calling off holiday gathering plans. Quiet contemplation will feel more appropriate.

But this is perhaps counterintuitively against instinct. For in these days of fear, outrage, 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 sadly, all of the portents are that cohesion in politics and the community will be elusive this long, enervating summer.