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As Australia settles into for a customary Christmas holiday across languorous days of coast and blistering heat set to the background of sporting matches and cicada song, this year the country’s summer mood seems, unfortunately, like no other.

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

Throughout the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of the nation's urban centers – a tone of immediate shock, grief and terror is segueing to anger and bitter division.

Those who had not picked up on the often voiced fears of the Jewish community are now highly attuned. Just as, they are sensitive to balancing the need for a much more immediate, energetic 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 faith in mankind is so deeply depleted. This is particularly so for those of us fortunate enough never to have endured the animosity and fear of religious and ethnic 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 views but no sense at all of that profound vulnerability.

This is a time when I regret not having a greater spiritual belief. I mourn, because believing in people – in mankind’s potential for compassion – has let us down so painfully. Something else, a greater power, is required.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have witnessed such extreme examples of human decency. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The selflessness of bystanders. First responders – police officers and medical staff, those who charged into the danger to aid fellow humans, some recognised but for the most part unnamed and unsung.

When the barrier cordon still fluttered wildly all about Bondi, the necessity of social, religious and ethnic solidarity 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 (illumination amid darkness), there was so much fitting evocation of the need for hope.

Togetherness, light and love was the message of belief.

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

And yet elements of the Australian polity reacted so nauseatingly quickly with fragmentation, finger-pointing and recrimination.

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

Observe the harmful message of division from veteran fomenters of societal discord, exploiting the attack before the crime scene was even cold. Then consider the statements of leadership aspirants while the probe was still active.

Government has a formidable task to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is grieving and scared and seeking the hope and, importantly, explanations to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was assessed as likely, did such a significant public Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a grossly inadequate protection? Like how could the accused attackers have multiple firearms in the residence when the security agency has so publicly and repeatedly warned of the danger of targeted attacks?

How rapidly we were subjected to that tired line (or versions of it) that it’s people not guns that kill. Naturally, both things are valid. It’s feasible to at the same time pursue new ways to prevent violent bigotry and keep guns away from its possible actors.

In this metropolis of profound splendor, of pristine blue heavens above ocean and sand, the water and the coastline – our shared community spaces – may not seem quite the same again to the many who’ve observed that iconic Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s obscene violence.

We long right now for understanding and meaning, for loved ones, and perhaps for the consolation of aesthetics in art or nature.

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

But this is perhaps counterintuitively counterintuitive. For in these days of anxiety, outrage, sadness, confusion and loss we require each other more than ever.

The comfort of togetherness – 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 public life and society will be hard to find this extended, draining summer.