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While Australia winds down for a traditional Christmas holiday across languorous days of coast and scorching heat set to the soundtrack of sporting matches and insect sounds, this year the nation's summer atmosphere feels, unfortunately, like none before.

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

Across the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of Australian cities – a tone of immediate surprise, grief and terror is segueing to anger and deep division.

Those who had not picked up on the often voiced fears of Australian Jews are now acutely aware. Just as, they are attuned to balancing the need for a far more urgent, energetic official fight against antisemitism 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 especially so for those of us fortunate enough never to have endured the hatred and dread of faith-based targeting on this continent or anywhere else.

And yet the algorithms keep spewing at us the banal instant opinions of those with inflammatory, divisive stances but little understanding at all of that profound vulnerability.

This is a period when I lament not having a greater faith. I lament, because having faith in people – in mankind’s potential for compassion – has let us down so painfully. Something else, something higher, is required.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have witnessed such extreme examples of human decency. The heroism of individuals. The selflessness of bystanders. Emergency personnel – law enforcement and paramedics, those who ran towards the gunfire to help fellow humans, some recognised but for the most part anonymous and unsung.

When the police tape still fluttered wildly all about Bondi, the necessity of social, faith-based and cultural unity was admirably championed by faith leaders. It was a call of love and acceptance – of unifying rather than splitting apart in a moment of targeted violence.

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

Unity, light and compassion was the message of faith.

‘Our public places may not look exactly as they did again.’

And yet elements of the Australian polity reacted so disgustingly 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 dangerous rhetoric of division from longstanding 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.

Politics has a daunting job to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is mourning and scared and seeking the hope and, not least, explanations to so many questions.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was judged as likely, did such a significant open-air Hanukah event go ahead with such a woefully insufficient protection? Like how could the alleged killers have multiple firearms in the residence when the security agency has so openly and repeatedly alerted of the threat of targeted attacks?

How quickly we were subjected to that cliched argument (or versions of it) that it’s people not guns that kill. Naturally, each point are valid. It’s feasible to at the same time pursue new ways to prevent violent bigotry and keep guns away from its potential actors.

In this city of immense beauty, of clear azure skies above ocean and sand, the ocean and the beaches – our communal areas – may not look entirely familiar again to the multitude who’ve observed that iconic Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s horrific violence.

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

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

But this is perhaps counterintuitively against instinct. For in these days of anxiety, anger, sadness, confusion and grief 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 probably need most.

But tragically, all of the portents are that cohesion in public life and society will be elusive this long, enervating summer.