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As Australia winds down for a customary Christmas holiday during slow-moving days of coast and scorching heat accompanied by the background of Test cricket and cicada song, this year the nation's summer atmosphere feels, sadly, like none before.

It would be a significant understatement to characterize the collective disposition after the anti-Jewish terrorist attack on Australian Jews during the beachside Hanukah festivities as one of mere ennui.

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

Those who had previously missed the often voiced concerns of Australian Jews are now highly attuned. Similarly, they are sensitive to reconciling the need for a much more immediate, energetic official 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 sorely depleted. This is particularly so for those of us fortunate enough never to have experienced the animosity and dread of faith-based persecution on this continent or anywhere else.

And yet the algorithms keep churning out at us the trite hot takes of those with blistering, divisive views but no sense at all of that terrifying vulnerability.

This is a period when I lament not having a stronger faith. I lament, because having faith in humanity – in our capacity for kindness – has failed us so acutely. Something else, something higher, is needed.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have seen such profound instances of human goodness. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The bravery of those present. First responders – law enforcement and medical staff, those who ran towards the gunfire to help fellow humans, some publicly hailed but for the most part unnamed and unsung.

When the police tape still waved wildly all about Bondi, the imperative of social, religious and cultural unity was admirably promoted by faith leaders. It was a message of compassion and tolerance – of bringing together rather than splitting apart in a time of targeted violence.

Consistent with the symbolism of the Festival of Lights (light amid darkness), there was so much fitting evocation of the need for lightness.

Unity, hope and love was the message of belief.

‘Our public places may not look quite the same again.’

And yet elements of the political landscape responded so nauseatingly quickly with fragmentation, finger-pointing and accusation.

Some elected officials gravitated straight for the darkness, using tragedy as a calculating opportunity to question Australia’s immigration policies.

Observe the harmful rhetoric of division from veteran agitators of Australian racial division, exploiting the attack before the crime scene was even cold. Then consider the words of political figures while the probe was still active.

Politics has a formidable job to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is grieving and scared and looking for the hope 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 event go ahead with such a woefully inadequate security presence? Like how could the alleged killers have multiple firearms in the residence when the domestic intelligence organisation has so openly and consistently warned of the danger of antisemitic violence?

How quickly we were treated to that cliched argument (or iterations of it) that it’s people not guns that cause death. Of course, each point are valid. It’s possible to simultaneously seek new ways to stop violent bigotry and keep guns away from its possible actors.

In this metropolis of immense splendor, of clear blue heavens above ocean and sand, the water and the beaches – our shared community spaces – may not seem entirely familiar again to the multitude who’ve noted that iconic Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s obscene violence.

We yearn right now for understanding and significance, for family, and perhaps for the consolation of aesthetics in culture or nature.

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

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

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

But tragically, all of the portents are that unity in politics and society will be elusive this long, draining summer.