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As the nation settles into for a traditional Christmas holiday across slow-moving 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 none before.

It would be a significant oversimplification to characterize the collective temperament after the antisemitic terrorist attack on Jewish Australians during Bondi Hanukah celebrations as one of simple discontent.

Across the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of Australian cities – a tone of immediate shock, sorrow and horror is shifting to fury and bitter polarization.

Those who had previously missed the often voiced fears of Australian Jews are now acutely aware. Similarly, they are sensitive to reconciling the need for a far more urgent, vigorous official crackdown against anti-Jewish hatred with the right to demonstrate against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a time for a countrywide dialogue, it is now, when our faith in humanity is so sorely depleted. This is particularly so for those of us fortunate enough never to have experienced the hatred and fear of faith-based persecution on this continent or anywhere else.

And yet the algorithms keep churning out at us the banal instant opinions 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 faith. I lament, because believing in people – in our capacity for compassion – has let us down so painfully. A different source, something higher, is required.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have seen such extreme examples of human goodness. The heroism of individuals. The selflessness of bystanders. Emergency personnel – police officers and paramedics, those who charged into the gunfire to aid fellow humans, some recognised but for the most part anonymous and unsung.

When the police tape still waved in the wind all about Bondi, the imperative of social, faith-based and ethnic unity was admirably championed by faith leaders. It was a message of love and tolerance – of bringing together rather than splitting apart in a time of antisemitic slaughter.

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

Unity, hope and love was the essence of belief.

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

And yet elements of the political landscape responded so disgustingly quickly with fragmentation, finger-pointing and recrimination.

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

Witness the dangerous message of disunity from longstanding fomenters of Australian racial division, capitalizing on the massacre before the site was even cold. Then read the words of leadership aspirants while the probe was still active.

Government has a formidable 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 assessed as probable, did such a large public Hanukah event go ahead with such a grossly insufficient protection? Like how could the alleged killers have multiple firearms in the residence when the domestic intelligence organisation has so publicly and repeatedly alerted of the danger of targeted attacks?

How quickly we were treated to that tired argument (or iterations of it) that it’s people not weapons that cause death. Of course, both things are valid. It’s feasible to at the same time seek new ways to prevent violent bigotry and prevent firearms away from its potential actors.

In this metropolis of profound splendor, of clear blue heavens above sea and sand, the water and the beaches – our shared community spaces – may not look entirely familiar again to the multitude who’ve observed that famous Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s obscene violence.

We long right now for comprehension and meaning, for loved ones, and perhaps for the consolation of aesthetics in culture or the natural world.

This weekend many Australians are calling off Christmas party plans. Reflective solitude will feel more in order.

But this is perhaps counterintuitively counterintuitive. For in these days of fear, outrage, melancholy, bewilderment and grief we require each other now more than ever.

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

But tragically, all of the indicators are that unity in public life and the community will be hard to find this extended, enervating summer.