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As the nation winds down for a customary Christmas holiday during slow-moving days of beach and scorching heat set to the background of sporting matches and cicada song, this year the nation's summer mood feels, sadly, like no other.

It would be a dramatic understatement to characterize the collective disposition after the antisemitic terrorist attack on Jewish Australians during Bondi Hanukah celebrations as one of simple ennui.

Across the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of the nation's urban centers – a tenor of initial shock, sorrow and terror is segueing to anger and bitter 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 far more urgent, energetic official crackdown against antisemitism with the right to demonstrate against genocide.

If ever there was a moment for a countrywide dialogue, it is now, when our belief in mankind is so deeply diminished. This is especially so for those of us lucky never to have endured the hatred and dread of religious and ethnic targeting on this continent or elsewhere.

And yet the algorithms keep churning out at us the banal instant opinions of those with blistering, divisive stances but little understanding at all of that terrifying vulnerability.

This is a time when I lament not having a greater faith. I mourn, because having faith in people – in our capacity for kindness – has let us down so painfully. A different source, something higher, is needed.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have witnessed such profound examples of human decency. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The selflessness of bystanders. Emergency personnel – police officers and paramedics, those who charged into the gunfire to aid fellow humans, some recognised but for the most part unnamed and unheralded.

When the barrier cordon still fluttered in the wind all about Bondi, the necessity of social, religious and ethnic solidarity was laudably championed by religious figures. It was a call of compassion and acceptance – of unifying rather than splitting apart in a time of targeted violence.

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

Togetherness, light and love was the message of faith.

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

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

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

Witness the harmful message of division from longstanding agitators of societal discord, exploiting the attack before the site was even cold. Then consider the statements of political figures while the investigation was still active.

Government has a formidable task to do when it comes to bringing together 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 assessed as probable, did such a large open-air Hanukah event go ahead with such a grossly inadequate security presence? Like how could the accused attackers have multiple firearms in the residence when the domestic intelligence organisation has so openly and consistently warned of the danger of antisemitic violence?

How quickly we were treated to that tired argument (or versions of it) that it’s individuals not weapons that cause death. Of course, each point are valid. It’s feasible to at the same time pursue new ways to prevent violent bigotry and prevent firearms away from its possible actors.

In this metropolis of immense splendor, of clear azure skies above ocean and shore, the ocean and the coastline – our communal areas – may not look quite the same again to the multitude who’ve observed that iconic Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s horrific bloodshed.

We long right now for understanding and meaning, for family, and perhaps for the solace of beauty in culture or the natural world.

This weekend many Australians are calling off holiday gathering plans. Reflective solitude will feel more appropriate.

But this is perhaps somewhat counterintuitive. For in these times of anxiety, outrage, sadness, confusion and grief we need each other now more than ever.

The comfort of community – the binding force of the unity in the very word – is what we likely need most.

But sadly, all of the portents are that unity in public life and the community will be hard to find this extended, enervating summer.