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As Australia winds down for a traditional Christmas holiday during slow-moving days of coast and scorching heat accompanied by the soundtrack of Test cricket and insect sounds, this year the nation's summer atmosphere seems, sadly, like no other.

It would be a dramatic understatement to describe the national disposition after the antisemitic terrorist attack on Australian Jews during Bondi Hanukah festivities as one of simple ennui.

Across the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of Australian cities – a tenor of immediate surprise, sorrow and terror is segueing to anger and deep polarization.

Those who had not picked up on the frequently expressed fears of the Jewish community are now acutely aware. Just as, they are attuned to balancing the need for a much more immediate, energetic official crackdown against antisemitism with the right to peacefully protest against genocide.

If ever there was a moment for a countrywide dialogue, it is now, when our belief in mankind is so deeply diminished. This is especially so for those of us lucky never to have endured the animosity and fear of faith-based persecution 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, polarizing stances but little understanding at all of that profound fragility.

This is a time when I regret not having a stronger spiritual belief. I mourn, because having faith in people – in mankind’s capacity for kindness – has failed us so painfully. A different source, something higher, is needed.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have seen such extreme instances of human goodness. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The bravery of those present. Emergency personnel – police officers and medical staff, those who ran towards the danger to aid fellow humans, some publicly hailed but for the most part unnamed and unsung.

When the barrier cordon still fluttered wildly all about Bondi, the necessity of social, faith-based and cultural solidarity was laudably championed by faith leaders. It was a message of compassion and tolerance – of bringing together rather than splitting apart in a time of antisemitic slaughter.

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

Unity, hope and compassion was the message of belief.

‘Our shared community spaces may not look exactly as they did again.’

And yet segments of the Australian polity responded so nauseatingly swiftly with fragmentation, blame and accusation.

Some politicians gravitated straight for the pessimism, using the atrocity as a calculating opportunity to challenge Australia’s immigration policies.

Observe the harmful message of division from longstanding agitators of societal discord, capitalizing on the massacre before the site was even cold. Then consider the statements of political figures while the investigation was still active.

Politics has a daunting task to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is grieving and scared and seeking the hope and, importantly, explanations to so many questions.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was assessed as probable, did such a significant open-air Hanukah event go ahead with such a woefully inadequate security presence? Like how could the alleged killers have six guns in the residence when the domestic intelligence organisation has so publicly and repeatedly warned of the danger of antisemitic violence?

How quickly we were subjected to that tired line (or versions of it) that it’s individuals not weapons that kill. Naturally, both things are true. It’s possible to at the same time pursue new ways to stop hate-fuelled violence and prevent guns away from its potential actors.

In this metropolis of immense beauty, of clear azure skies above sea and sand, the ocean and the beaches – our shared community spaces – may not seem quite the same again to the multitude who’ve observed that famous Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s obscene bloodshed.

We yearn right now for comprehension and significance, for loved ones, and perhaps for the solace of aesthetics in art or the natural world.

This weekend many Australians are cancelling Christmas party plans. Quiet contemplation will feel more appropriate.

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

The reassurance of togetherness – the human glue 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.