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While Australia settles into for a traditional Christmas holiday across slow-moving days of beach and scorching heat accompanied by the background of sporting matches and cicada song, this year the country’s summer mood feels, sadly, like no other.

It would be a dramatic understatement to characterize the national temperament after the anti-Jewish terrorist attack on Jewish Australians during the beachside Hanukah celebrations as one of simple ennui.

Throughout the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of the nation's urban centers – a tenor of immediate surprise, grief and terror is segueing to fury and deep division.

Those who had not picked up on the often voiced concerns of the Jewish community are now acutely aware. Just as, they are attuned to reconciling the need for a far more urgent, energetic official crackdown against anti-Jewish hatred with the right to peacefully protest against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a moment for a countrywide dialogue, it is now, when our belief in mankind is so sorely depleted. This is particularly so for those of us fortunate enough never to have experienced the animosity and fear of faith-based persecution on this continent or elsewhere.

And yet the algorithms keep churning out at us the banal instant opinions of those with blistering, polarizing stances but little understanding at all of that profound vulnerability.

This is a period when I lament not having a greater spiritual belief. I lament, because believing in people – in our capacity for compassion – has let us down so painfully. A different source, a greater power, is required.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have witnessed such profound instances of human decency. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The selflessness of bystanders. Emergency personnel – police officers and medical staff, those who charged into the danger to help fellow humans, some recognised but for the most part anonymous and unsung.

When the barrier cordon still waved wildly all about Bondi, the imperative of community, religious and ethnic unity was admirably championed by faith leaders. It was a call of compassion and tolerance – of unifying rather than splitting apart in a time of antisemitic slaughter.

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

Unity, hope and compassion was the essence of belief.

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

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

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

Observe the harmful message of division from longstanding fomenters of Australian racial division, exploiting the massacre before the crime scene was even cold. Then consider the statements of leadership aspirants while the investigation was ongoing.

Government has a formidable job to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is grieving and frightened and looking for the light and, not least, explanations to so many questions.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was judged as likely, did such a large open-air Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a woefully inadequate security presence? Like how could the accused attackers have multiple firearms in the family home when the security agency has so publicly and consistently alerted of the danger of targeted attacks?

How rapidly we were subjected to that tired argument (or iterations of it) that it’s people not weapons that cause death. Of course, each point are valid. It’s possible to at the same time pursue new ways to stop hate-fuelled violence and keep guns away from its possible actors.

In this metropolis of profound splendor, of pristine azure skies above sea and shore, the ocean and the coastline – our communal areas – may not look quite the same again to the multitude who’ve noted that iconic 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 consolation of aesthetics in culture or the natural world.

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

But this is perhaps somewhat against instinct. For in these times of fear, anger, melancholy, bewilderment and loss we require each other now more than ever.

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

But sadly, all of the indicators are that cohesion in politics and the community will be hard to find this extended, enervating summer.