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While the nation winds down for a customary Christmas holiday during slow-moving days of beach and blistering heat set to the soundtrack of sporting matches and insect sounds, this year the country’s summer atmosphere feels, sadly, like no other.

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

Throughout the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of the nation's urban centers – a tone of immediate surprise, grief and horror is segueing to anger and deep division.

Those who had not picked up on the often voiced fears of the Jewish community are now acutely aware. Similarly, they are attuned to reconciling the need for a far more urgent, vigorous official fight against anti-Jewish hatred with the freedom to demonstrate against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a moment for a countrywide dialogue, it is now, when our belief in humanity is so sorely depleted. This is particularly so for those of us fortunate enough never to have experienced the hatred and fear of faith-based targeting on this land or elsewhere.

And yet the social media feeds keep spewing at us the banal instant opinions of those with inflammatory, divisive views but no sense at all of that profound vulnerability.

This is a time when I lament not having a stronger spiritual belief. I mourn, because having faith in people – in mankind’s capacity for kindness – has let us down so painfully. Something else, a greater power, is required.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have seen such profound instances of human goodness. The heroism of individuals. The selflessness of bystanders. Emergency personnel – law enforcement and medical staff, those who charged into the gunfire to aid others, some publicly hailed but for the most part anonymous and unsung.

When the police tape still fluttered in the wind all about Bondi, the imperative of community, religious and cultural solidarity was laudably championed by faith leaders. It was a call of compassion and acceptance – of unifying rather than splitting apart in a time of targeted violence.

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

Togetherness, hope and love was the essence of belief.

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

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

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

Witness the harmful message of division from longstanding agitators of Australian racial division, capitalizing on the massacre before the site was even cold. Then consider the words of political figures while the investigation was ongoing.

Politics has a formidable task to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is grieving and frightened and seeking the light and, not least, answers to so many questions.

Like why, when the official terror alert was judged as probable, did such a significant public Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a woefully inadequate protection? Like how could the accused attackers have six guns in the residence when the domestic intelligence organisation has so openly and repeatedly warned of the danger of targeted attacks?

How quickly we were subjected to that tired argument (or versions of it) that it’s individuals not weapons that kill. Of course, each point are true. It’s possible to simultaneously seek new ways to prevent hate-fuelled violence and keep firearms away from its potential perpetrators.

In this metropolis of profound beauty, of pristine azure skies above ocean and sand, the water and the coastline – our shared community spaces – may not look quite the same again to the multitude who’ve observed that iconic Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s horrific bloodshed.

We yearn right now for comprehension and meaning, for loved ones, and perhaps for the solace of aesthetics in art or nature.

This weekend many Australians are cancelling Christmas party plans. Reflective solitude will seem more in order.

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

The comfort of community – the human glue of the unity in the very word – is what we probably need most.

But sadly, all of the indicators are that cohesion in politics and society will be hard to find this extended, draining summer.