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As Australia winds down for a customary Christmas holiday across slow-moving 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 none before.

It would be a dramatic oversimplification to characterize the national temperament 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 tone of initial surprise, sorrow and horror is segueing to anger and bitter division.

Those who had previously missed the frequently expressed fears of Australian Jews are now acutely aware. Similarly, they are attuned to balancing the need for a much more immediate, vigorous official crackdown against anti-Jewish hatred with the freedom to demonstrate against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a time for a countrywide dialogue, it is now, when our faith in mankind is so deeply diminished. This is especially so for those of us lucky never to have experienced the hatred and dread of religious and ethnic persecution on this continent or anywhere else.

And yet the algorithms keep spewing at us the banal hot takes 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 stronger spiritual belief. I mourn, because believing in humanity – in mankind’s potential for compassion – has failed us so painfully. A different source, something higher, is required.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have witnessed such profound instances of human decency. The heroism of individuals. The selflessness of bystanders. First responders – law enforcement and paramedics, those who charged into the gunfire to help fellow humans, some publicly hailed but for the most part unnamed and unheralded.

When the police tape still waved wildly all about Bondi, the imperative of community, religious and cultural unity was laudably promoted by religious figures. It was a call of compassion and tolerance – of unifying rather than splitting apart in a moment of antisemitic slaughter.

Consistent with the symbolism of Hanukah (light amid gloom), there was so much fitting evocation of the need for lightness.

Unity, light and love was the message of faith.

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

And yet segments of the political landscape reacted so nauseatingly quickly with fragmentation, blame and accusation.

Some elected officials gravitated straight for the pessimism, using the atrocity as a calculating opportunity to question Australia’s immigration policies.

Witness the harmful rhetoric of division from longstanding agitators of Australian racial division, exploiting the attack before the site was even cold. Then read the words of political figures while the investigation was still active.

Government has a formidable task to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is mourning and frightened and looking for the light and, importantly, answers to so many questions.

Like why, when the official terror alert was judged as likely, did such a significant open-air Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a grossly inadequate protection? Like how could the alleged killers have six guns in the residence when the security agency has so openly and repeatedly warned of the threat of targeted attacks?

How quickly we were treated to that cliched argument (or iterations of it) that it’s individuals not guns that cause death. Of course, each point are valid. It’s feasible to at the same time pursue new ways to prevent hate-fuelled violence and keep firearms away from its potential perpetrators.

In this city of immense splendor, of clear azure skies above ocean and sand, the ocean and the coastline – our shared community spaces – may not seem entirely familiar again to the multitude who’ve noted that iconic Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s obscene violence.

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

This weekend many Australians are cancelling Christmas party plans. Quiet contemplation will seem more in order.

But this is perhaps somewhat counterintuitive. For in these days of fear, anger, 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 tragically, all of the portents are that cohesion in public life and the community will be elusive this long, enervating summer.