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While the nation settles into for a customary Christmas holiday during slow-moving days of beach and blistering heat set to the soundtrack of sporting matches and cicada song, this year the nation's summer mood feels, unfortunately, like none before.

It would be a significant oversimplification to describe the national disposition after the antisemitic terrorist attack on Australian Jews during the beachside Hanukah festivities as one of mere ennui.

Across the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of the nation's urban centers – a tone of immediate surprise, sorrow 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. Just as, they are attuned to balancing the need for a far more urgent, vigorous official crackdown against antisemitism with the right to demonstrate against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a moment for a countrywide dialogue, it is now, when our faith in humanity is so sorely diminished. This is particularly so for those of us fortunate enough never to have endured the animosity and dread of religious and ethnic targeting on this continent or anywhere else.

And yet the algorithms keep spewing at us the trite instant opinions of those with inflammatory, polarizing stances but no sense at all of that terrifying fragility.

This is a period when I regret not having a stronger faith. I mourn, because believing in humanity – in our capacity for compassion – has let us down so acutely. Something else, a greater power, is needed.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have seen such profound instances of human goodness. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The bravery of those present. Emergency personnel – law enforcement and paramedics, those who ran towards the danger to help fellow humans, some recognised but for the most part anonymous and unheralded.

When the police tape still fluttered wildly all about Bondi, the imperative of community, religious and cultural solidarity was admirably championed by faith leaders. It was a call of love and acceptance – of bringing together rather than dividing in a moment of antisemitic slaughter.

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

Unity, light and love was the message of faith.

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

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

Some politicians gravitated straight for the darkness, using tragedy as a cynical opportunity to question Australia’s immigration policies.

Witness the dangerous message of division from longstanding agitators of Australian racial division, exploiting the massacre before the site was even cold. Then read the words of leadership aspirants while the probe was still active.

Politics has a daunting task 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 likely, did such a significant open-air Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a woefully insufficient protection? Like how could the accused attackers have six guns in the residence when the domestic intelligence organisation has so openly and consistently warned of the threat of targeted attacks?

How rapidly we were subjected to that cliched argument (or versions of it) that it’s people not weapons that cause death. Of course, both things are true. It’s possible to simultaneously pursue new ways to prevent violent bigotry and keep firearms away from its potential perpetrators.

In this city of immense splendor, of clear azure skies above sea and sand, the water and the coastline – our communal areas – may not look quite the same again to the multitude 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 consolation of beauty in culture or the natural world.

This weekend many Australians are cancelling holiday gathering plans. Reflective solitude will seem more appropriate.

But this is perhaps counterintuitively against instinct. For in these times of fear, anger, sadness, confusion and grief we need each other now more than ever.

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

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