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As the nation settles into for a customary Christmas holiday across slow-moving days of beach and scorching heat set to the background of Test cricket and cicada song, this year the nation's summer mood seems, unfortunately, like no other.

It would be a dramatic oversimplification to describe the national disposition after the antisemitic terrorist attack on Jewish Australians during Bondi Hanukah festivities as one of simple discontent.

Throughout the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of the nation's urban centers – a tone of immediate shock, grief and horror is shifting to anger and bitter division.

Those who had not picked up on the frequently expressed fears of the Jewish community are now acutely aware. Just as, they are sensitive to reconciling the need for a much more immediate, energetic official fight against antisemitism with the right to demonstrate against mass atrocities.

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

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

This is a time when I regret not having a greater spiritual belief. I mourn, because believing in humanity – in mankind’s potential for compassion – has failed us so acutely. Something else, a greater power, is required.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have seen such extreme examples of human goodness. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The selflessness of bystanders. Emergency personnel – law enforcement and paramedics, those who charged into the danger to aid fellow humans, some recognised but for the most part unnamed and unheralded.

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

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

Togetherness, hope and love was the essence of faith.

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

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

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

Witness the dangerous rhetoric of disunity from longstanding fomenters of societal discord, capitalizing on the attack before the site was even cold. Then read the words of leadership aspirants while the investigation was ongoing.

Government has a daunting job to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is grieving and frightened and looking for the light and, importantly, explanations to so many questions.

Like why, when the official terror alert was assessed as probable, did such a large open-air Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a grossly insufficient protection? Like how could the accused attackers have six guns in the family home when the security agency has so openly and repeatedly alerted of the threat of antisemitic violence?

How rapidly we were subjected to that cliched line (or versions of it) that it’s people not guns that cause death. Naturally, each point are true. It’s feasible to at the same time pursue new ways to prevent hate-fuelled violence and keep guns away from its potential actors.

In this city of profound beauty, of pristine blue heavens above ocean and shore, the water and the coastline – our shared community spaces – may not look entirely familiar again to the multitude who’ve observed that famous Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s obscene violence.

We yearn right now for understanding and significance, for family, and perhaps for the solace of beauty in art or nature.

This weekend many Australians are calling off Christmas party plans. Reflective solitude will feel more appropriate.

But this is perhaps counterintuitively against instinct. For in these times of fear, outrage, melancholy, confusion 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 sadly, all of the indicators are that cohesion in politics and society will be hard to find this extended, draining summer.