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As Australia settles into for a traditional Christmas holiday across slow-moving days of coast and blistering heat set to the background of Test cricket and cicada song, this year the nation's summer atmosphere feels, unfortunately, like no other.

It would be a significant oversimplification to describe the national temperament after the anti-Jewish terrorist attack on Australian Jews during Bondi 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 initial shock, sorrow and terror is segueing to fury and bitter division.

Those who had not picked up on the often voiced concerns of Australian Jews are now acutely aware. Just as, they are sensitive to reconciling the need for a far more urgent, energetic government and institutional crackdown 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 especially so for those of us lucky never to have endured the hatred and fear of religious and ethnic targeting on this land or anywhere else.

And yet the social media feeds keep churning out at us the banal instant opinions of those with blistering, divisive stances but no sense at all of that profound vulnerability.

This is a time when I regret not having a stronger spiritual belief. I lament, because believing in people – in our potential for kindness – has let us down so acutely. A different source, a greater power, is required.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have witnessed such extreme instances of human goodness. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The selflessness of bystanders. First responders – police officers and paramedics, those who ran towards the gunfire to help fellow humans, some publicly hailed but for the most part unnamed and unheralded.

When the police tape still waved wildly all about Bondi, the necessity of social, religious and ethnic solidarity was laudably championed by faith leaders. It was a call of compassion and acceptance – of unifying rather than dividing in a time of antisemitic slaughter.

Consistent with the meaning of the Festival of Lights (light amid gloom), there was so much appropriate reference of the need for lightness.

Unity, light and love was the essence of faith.

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

And yet segments of the political landscape responded so nauseatingly swiftly with division, blame and recrimination.

Some politicians gravitated straight for the darkness, using the atrocity as a cynical opportunity to question Australia’s migration rules.

Witness the harmful rhetoric of disunity from longstanding fomenters of Australian racial division, capitalizing on the massacre before the site was even cold. Then consider the words of leadership aspirants while the probe was ongoing.

Government has a daunting task to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is grieving and frightened and looking for the hope and, importantly, explanations to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was assessed as likely, did such a significant public Hanukah event go ahead with such a grossly insufficient protection? Like how could the accused attackers have multiple firearms in the family home when the domestic intelligence organisation has so openly and consistently alerted of the danger of targeted attacks?

How rapidly we were treated to that tired argument (or iterations of it) that it’s people not guns that cause death. Of course, both things are true. It’s feasible to at the same time pursue new ways to stop violent bigotry and prevent firearms away from its possible actors.

In this city of profound splendor, of pristine azure skies above sea and shore, the ocean and the beaches – our shared community spaces – may not look quite the same again to the multitude who’ve observed that iconic Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s horrific bloodshed.

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

This weekend many Australians are cancelling holiday gathering plans. Quiet contemplation will seem more appropriate.

But this is perhaps somewhat against instinct. For in these times of fear, anger, melancholy, 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 likely need most.

But tragically, all of the portents are that unity in public life and the community will be elusive this extended, draining summer.