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As the nation settles into for a customary Christmas holiday across languorous days of coast and scorching heat accompanied by the background of Test cricket and cicada song, this year the nation's summer atmosphere feels, unfortunately, like none before.

It would be a significant oversimplification to characterize the national disposition after the antisemitic terrorist attack on Jewish Australians during Bondi Hanukah celebrations as one of mere ennui.

Throughout the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of Australian cities – a tone of initial shock, grief and horror is segueing to fury and deep polarization.

Those who had not picked up on the often voiced fears of Australian Jews are now highly attuned. Similarly, they are sensitive to reconciling the need for a much more immediate, vigorous government and institutional crackdown against antisemitism with the right 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 sorely depleted. This is particularly so for those of us lucky never to have experienced the animosity and fear of faith-based targeting on this continent or elsewhere.

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

This is a time when I lament not having a stronger spiritual belief. I mourn, because believing in humanity – in our potential for kindness – has failed us so acutely. A different source, something higher, is required.

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

When the barrier cordon still waved wildly all about Bondi, the necessity of social, faith-based and cultural solidarity was laudably championed by religious figures. It was a call of love and tolerance – of bringing together rather than splitting apart in a moment of targeted violence.

In keeping with the meaning of the Festival of Lights (illumination amid darkness), there was so much fitting reference of the need for lightness.

Unity, light and love was the essence of faith.

‘Our public places may not look exactly as they did again.’

And yet elements of the Australian polity responded so nauseatingly quickly with division, finger-pointing and accusation.

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

Observe the harmful message of disunity from longstanding agitators of Australian racial division, capitalizing on the attack before the site was even cold. Then consider 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, answers 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 inadequate protection? 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 subjected to that cliched argument (or versions of it) that it’s people not weapons that kill. Naturally, each point are valid. It’s feasible to simultaneously seek new ways to prevent hate-fuelled violence and prevent firearms away from its possible perpetrators.

In this city of profound splendor, of clear azure skies above ocean and sand, the water and the beaches – our shared community spaces – may not look entirely familiar again to the many who’ve noted that iconic Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s obscene bloodshed.

We long right now for comprehension and meaning, for loved ones, and perhaps for the solace of aesthetics in culture 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 against instinct. For in these days of anxiety, outrage, melancholy, 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 society will be elusive this long, enervating summer.