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While the nation winds down for a customary Christmas holiday across languorous days of beach and scorching heat set to the background of sporting matches and insect sounds, this year the nation's summer mood seems, sadly, like no other.

It would be a significant oversimplification to characterize the national temperament after the antisemitic violent assault on Jewish Australians during Bondi 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 bitter division.

Those who had previously missed the often voiced concerns of Australian Jews are now highly attuned. Similarly, they are attuned to balancing the need for a far more urgent, energetic government and institutional 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 faith in humanity is so deeply depleted. This is especially so for those of us lucky never to have experienced the hatred and fear of faith-based targeting on this land or anywhere else.

And yet the social media feeds keep churning out at us the trite instant opinions of those with inflammatory, divisive views but no sense at all of that terrifying vulnerability.

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

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have seen such extreme examples of human decency. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The bravery of those present. Emergency personnel – police officers and paramedics, those who charged into the gunfire to aid others, some recognised but for the most part unnamed and unheralded.

When the police tape still waved wildly all about Bondi, the necessity of social, religious and cultural solidarity was laudably championed by faith leaders. It was a message of compassion and tolerance – of unifying rather than dividing in a time of targeted violence.

In keeping with the symbolism of the Festival of Lights (light amid gloom), there was so much fitting reference of the need for lightness.

Unity, hope and compassion was the message of belief.

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

And yet segments of the political landscape responded so nauseatingly quickly with division, finger-pointing and accusation.

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

Witness the harmful rhetoric of disunity from veteran agitators of Australian racial division, capitalizing on the massacre before the crime scene was even cold. Then read the words 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 mourning and frightened and seeking the light and, not least, explanations to so many questions.

Like why, when the official terror alert was judged as likely, did such a significant open-air Hanukah event go ahead with such a grossly insufficient security presence? Like how could the alleged killers have six guns in the residence when the security agency has so openly and consistently warned of the danger of antisemitic violence?

How quickly we were subjected to that tired argument (or iterations of it) that it’s individuals not weapons that kill. Naturally, both things are valid. It’s feasible to simultaneously pursue new ways to stop hate-fuelled violence and keep guns away from its potential actors.

In this city of immense beauty, of clear blue heavens above sea and shore, the ocean and the beaches – our communal areas – may not look quite the same again to the many who’ve noted that iconic Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s horrific bloodshed.

We long right now for comprehension and significance, for family, and perhaps for the solace of beauty 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 counterintuitively against instinct. For in these times of fear, anger, sadness, confusion and loss we require each other now more than ever.

The comfort of togetherness – the binding force of the unity in the very word – is what we likely need most.

But sadly, all of the indicators are that cohesion in politics and society will be elusive this extended, enervating summer.