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While Australia winds down for a customary Christmas holiday across languorous days of coast and blistering heat accompanied by the background of Test cricket and cicada song, this year the nation's summer atmosphere seems, unfortunately, like none before.

It would be a significant oversimplification to describe the national temperament after the anti-Jewish terrorist attack on Australian Jews during Bondi Hanukah celebrations as one of mere discontent.

Throughout the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of Australian cities – a tone of immediate shock, sorrow and terror is shifting to anger and deep division.

Those who had not picked up on the frequently expressed concerns of the Jewish community are now acutely aware. Just as, they are sensitive to balancing the need for a much more immediate, vigorous government and institutional crackdown against antisemitism with the freedom 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 deeply depleted. This is particularly so for those of us fortunate enough never to have endured the hatred and dread of religious and ethnic targeting on this continent or anywhere else.

And yet the algorithms keep churning out at us the trite instant opinions of those with blistering, divisive stances but little understanding at all of that terrifying fragility.

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

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have witnessed such profound instances of human goodness. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The bravery of those present. Emergency personnel – law enforcement and medical staff, those who charged into the danger to aid fellow humans, some publicly hailed but for the most part anonymous and unsung.

When the police tape still fluttered in the wind all about Bondi, the necessity of social, religious and cultural unity was admirably championed by faith leaders. It was a message of compassion and acceptance – of bringing together rather than dividing in a moment of targeted violence.

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

Unity, light and love was the message of belief.

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

And yet segments of the Australian polity reacted so nauseatingly quickly with division, blame and accusation.

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

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

Politics has a formidable task to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is grieving and frightened and looking for 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 grossly inadequate security presence? Like how could the accused attackers have six guns in the residence when the security agency has so openly and repeatedly warned of the threat of antisemitic violence?

How quickly we were subjected to that tired line (or iterations of it) that it’s people not guns that kill. Naturally, both things are true. It’s feasible to simultaneously seek new ways to stop hate-fuelled violence and keep firearms away from its potential actors.

In this city of immense beauty, of clear blue heavens above sea 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 significance, for loved ones, and perhaps for the consolation of aesthetics in art or the natural world.

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

But this is perhaps somewhat counterintuitive. For in these days of anxiety, outrage, sadness, bewilderment and loss we need each other more than ever.

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

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