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As the nation settles into for a customary Christmas holiday across slow-moving days of coast and blistering heat accompanied by the soundtrack of sporting matches and cicada song, this year the country’s summer atmosphere seems, unfortunately, like no other.

It would be a significant oversimplification to describe the national disposition after the antisemitic terrorist attack on Australian Jews during the beachside Hanukah celebrations as one of simple discontent.

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

Those who had previously missed the often voiced concerns of the Jewish community are now highly attuned. Similarly, they are sensitive to balancing the need for a much more immediate, energetic official crackdown 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 mankind is so sorely diminished. This is particularly so for those of us fortunate enough never to have endured the animosity and fear of faith-based persecution on this land or elsewhere.

And yet the social media feeds keep spewing at us the trite instant opinions of those with inflammatory, polarizing stances but little understanding at all of that profound fragility.

This is a time when I regret not having a greater spiritual belief. I lament, because believing in humanity – in our potential for kindness – has let us down so painfully. Something else, something higher, is needed.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have seen such profound instances of human decency. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The selflessness of bystanders. First responders – law enforcement and paramedics, those who ran towards the gunfire to aid fellow humans, some publicly hailed but for the most part unnamed and unheralded.

When the barrier cordon still waved in the wind all about Bondi, the necessity of social, faith-based and ethnic unity was laudably promoted by religious figures. It was a call of compassion and tolerance – of unifying rather than splitting apart in a time of targeted violence.

Consistent with the meaning of the Festival of Lights (illumination amid darkness), there was so much fitting reference of the need for hope.

Unity, hope and compassion was the message of faith.

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

And yet elements of the Australian polity responded so nauseatingly quickly with division, finger-pointing and accusation.

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

Witness the dangerous message of division from veteran agitators of societal discord, exploiting the attack before the site was even cold. Then read the statements of leadership aspirants while the probe was still active.

Government has a formidable job to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is mourning and frightened and looking for the hope and, not least, answers to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was assessed as likely, did such a large open-air Hanukah event go ahead with such a woefully insufficient protection? 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 threat of targeted attacks?

How rapidly we were subjected to that cliched line (or iterations of it) that it’s individuals not guns that kill. Of course, each point are true. It’s feasible to simultaneously pursue new ways to stop hate-fuelled violence and prevent guns away from its potential actors.

In this city of immense splendor, of pristine blue heavens above ocean and shore, the water and the coastline – our shared community spaces – may not seem entirely familiar again to the multitude who’ve observed that famous Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s horrific violence.

We long right now for understanding and meaning, for loved ones, and perhaps for the consolation of beauty in culture or the natural world.

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

But this is perhaps counterintuitively counterintuitive. For in these times of anxiety, outrage, melancholy, bewilderment and grief we need each other more than ever.

The comfort 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 unity in public life and society will be elusive this long, draining summer.