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As Australia settles into for a traditional Christmas holiday during slow-moving days of coast and scorching heat accompanied by the soundtrack of sporting matches and cicada song, this year the country’s summer mood feels, sadly, like none before.

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

Throughout the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of the nation's urban centers – a tone of immediate surprise, grief and terror is segueing to anger and bitter polarization.

Those who had previously missed the often voiced concerns of the Jewish community are now acutely aware. Similarly, they are attuned to balancing the need for a far more urgent, vigorous government and institutional fight against antisemitism with the freedom to peacefully protest against genocide.

If ever there was a time for a countrywide dialogue, it is now, when our belief in mankind is so deeply diminished. This is particularly so for those of us lucky never to have experienced the hatred and fear of faith-based targeting on this continent or elsewhere.

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

This is a time when I regret not having a greater spiritual belief. I lament, because having faith in humanity – in mankind’s potential for kindness – has failed us so acutely. Something else, something higher, is needed.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have witnessed such extreme examples of human decency. The heroism of individuals. The bravery of those present. Emergency personnel – law enforcement and medical staff, those who charged into the gunfire to help others, some publicly hailed but for the most part anonymous and unheralded.

When the barrier cordon still waved in the wind all about Bondi, the imperative of social, faith-based and ethnic unity 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.

Consistent with the symbolism of Hanukah (light amid gloom), there was so much appropriate evocation of the need for lightness.

Togetherness, hope and compassion was the essence of belief.

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

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

Some elected officials moved straight for the pessimism, using tragedy as a cynical opportunity to question Australia’s migration rules.

Witness the dangerous message of disunity from veteran fomenters of societal discord, exploiting the attack before the crime scene was even cold. Then consider the statements of leadership aspirants while the probe was ongoing.

Government has a daunting task to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is grieving and scared and seeking the light and, not least, answers to so many questions.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was assessed as probable, did such a significant open-air Hanukah event go ahead with such a woefully insufficient protection? Like how could the accused attackers have six guns in the family home when the security agency has so publicly and repeatedly warned of the danger of antisemitic violence?

How rapidly we were subjected to that tired argument (or iterations of it) that it’s individuals not guns that cause death. Naturally, both things are true. It’s possible to simultaneously pursue new ways to stop hate-fuelled violence and prevent guns away from its possible perpetrators.

In this city of profound splendor, of clear blue heavens above ocean and sand, the ocean and the beaches – our communal areas – may not seem entirely familiar again to the many who’ve observed that iconic Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s horrific violence.

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

This weekend many Australians are cancelling Christmas party plans. Quiet contemplation will seem more in order.

But this is perhaps somewhat counterintuitive. For in these days of fear, anger, melancholy, bewilderment and grief we need each other now more than ever.

The reassurance of togetherness – the human glue of the unity in the very word – is what we likely need most.

But tragically, all of the portents are that cohesion in politics and society will be elusive this extended, enervating summer.