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While the nation settles into for a traditional Christmas holiday across languorous days of coast and scorching heat accompanied by the soundtrack of Test cricket and cicada song, this year the country’s summer atmosphere seems, sadly, like none before.

It would be a dramatic understatement to characterize the national disposition after the anti-Jewish terrorist attack on Jewish Australians during Bondi Hanukah celebrations as one of mere discontent.

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

Those who had not picked up on the frequently expressed fears of the Jewish community are now highly attuned. Just as, they are sensitive to balancing the need for a far more urgent, vigorous official fight against antisemitism with the freedom to demonstrate against genocide.

If ever there was a time for a countrywide dialogue, it is now, when our belief in mankind is so sorely diminished. This is especially so for those of us lucky never to have experienced the animosity and fear of faith-based targeting on this land or elsewhere.

And yet the algorithms keep churning out at us the trite hot takes of those with inflammatory, 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 mankind’s potential for kindness – has let us down so acutely. A different source, a greater power, is needed.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have seen such profound instances of human goodness. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The bravery of those present. First responders – police officers and paramedics, those who charged into the gunfire to help fellow humans, some recognised but for the most part unnamed and unsung.

When the police tape still waved in the wind all about Bondi, the imperative of community, faith-based and cultural solidarity was admirably championed by religious figures. It was a call of compassion and tolerance – of unifying rather than dividing in a time of antisemitic slaughter.

In keeping with the meaning of the Festival of Lights (light amid darkness), there was so much appropriate evocation of the need for lightness.

Unity, light and compassion was the essence of faith.

‘Our shared community spaces may not appear quite the same again.’

And yet segments of the Australian polity responded so disgustingly swiftly with fragmentation, finger-pointing and accusation.

Some elected officials moved straight for the pessimism, using tragedy as a cynical chance to challenge Australia’s migration rules.

Observe the harmful message of disunity from veteran agitators of societal discord, capitalizing on the massacre before the site was even cold. Then read the words of leadership aspirants while the probe was still active.

Politics has a formidable task to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is mourning and scared and seeking the light and, importantly, explanations to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the official terror alert was assessed as probable, did such a significant open-air Hanukah event go ahead with such a grossly inadequate security presence? Like how could the accused attackers have six guns in the residence when the domestic intelligence organisation has so openly and consistently warned of the danger of targeted attacks?

How quickly we were subjected to that tired argument (or versions of it) that it’s individuals not guns that kill. Of course, both things are valid. It’s possible to at the same time seek new ways to prevent violent bigotry and prevent firearms away from its possible perpetrators.

In this metropolis of immense beauty, of clear blue heavens above ocean and shore, the water and the coastline – our communal areas – may not seem entirely familiar again to the multitude who’ve observed that famous Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s obscene violence.

We long right now for comprehension and significance, for family, and perhaps for the consolation of aesthetics in art or nature.

This weekend many Australians are cancelling Christmas party plans. Reflective solitude will seem more appropriate.

But this is perhaps counterintuitively counterintuitive. For in these days of anxiety, outrage, sadness, bewilderment and grief we need 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 unity in politics and society will be elusive this long, enervating summer.