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While the nation winds down for a customary Christmas holiday across languorous days of beach and scorching heat set to the soundtrack of Test cricket and cicada song, this year the country’s summer atmosphere seems, sadly, like none before.

It would be a dramatic oversimplification to characterize the national disposition after the anti-Jewish terrorist attack on Jewish Australians during Bondi Hanukah celebrations as one of mere discontent.

Throughout the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of the nation's urban centers – a tone of immediate shock, grief and horror is shifting to fury and bitter division.

Those who had previously missed the frequently expressed concerns of the Jewish community are now acutely aware. Just as, they are sensitive to balancing the need for a far more urgent, energetic government and institutional crackdown against anti-Jewish hatred with the right to peacefully protest against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a moment for a countrywide dialogue, it is now, when our belief in humanity is so sorely diminished. This is particularly so for those of us lucky never to have endured the animosity and dread of religious and ethnic persecution on this land or elsewhere.

And yet the social media feeds keep churning out at us the banal hot takes of those with inflammatory, divisive views but little understanding at all of that terrifying fragility.

This is a time when I regret not having a greater spiritual belief. I lament, because having faith 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 profound instances of human decency. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The bravery of those present. First responders – police officers and medical staff, those who charged into the danger to aid others, some recognised but for the most part unnamed and unheralded.

When the barrier cordon still fluttered in the wind all about Bondi, the imperative of community, faith-based and cultural solidarity was laudably promoted by religious figures. It was a message of compassion and tolerance – of unifying rather than splitting apart in a moment of targeted violence.

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

Unity, hope and love was the message of faith.

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

And yet elements of the Australian polity reacted so nauseatingly quickly with fragmentation, finger-pointing and recrimination.

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

Observe the harmful rhetoric of disunity from veteran agitators of Australian racial division, capitalizing on the massacre before the site was even cold. Then read the words of political figures while the probe was still active.

Government has a daunting task to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is grieving and frightened and seeking the hope and, not least, explanations to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was assessed as likely, did such a significant public Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a grossly insufficient protection? Like how could the accused attackers have multiple firearms in the residence when the security agency has so openly and consistently alerted of the threat of targeted attacks?

How rapidly we were treated to that cliched line (or versions of it) that it’s people not weapons that cause death. Of course, both things are valid. It’s feasible to simultaneously seek new ways to stop hate-fuelled violence and keep guns away from its potential actors.

In this metropolis of immense beauty, of clear blue heavens above sea and sand, the water and the coastline – our communal areas – may not look entirely familiar again to the multitude who’ve observed that famous Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s obscene bloodshed.

We long right now for understanding and significance, for loved ones, and perhaps for the solace of aesthetics in art or nature.

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

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

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

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