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As Australia winds down for a customary Christmas holiday during languorous days of coast and scorching heat accompanied by the soundtrack of sporting matches and insect sounds, this year the country’s summer atmosphere feels, sadly, like none before.

It would be a dramatic oversimplification to describe the national disposition after the antisemitic terrorist attack on Australian Jews during the beachside Hanukah festivities as one of mere discontent.

Across 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 fury and bitter polarization.

Those who had previously missed the frequently expressed concerns of Australian Jews are now acutely aware. Just as, they are attuned to reconciling the need for a much more immediate, vigorous government and institutional crackdown against antisemitism with the freedom to demonstrate against genocide.

If ever there was a moment for a countrywide dialogue, it is now, when our faith in humanity is so sorely depleted. This is especially so for those of us lucky never to have experienced the animosity and fear of faith-based persecution on this land or anywhere else.

And yet the algorithms keep spewing at us the banal instant opinions of those with inflammatory, divisive stances but no sense at all of that terrifying vulnerability.

This is a period when I regret not having a greater spiritual belief. I lament, because believing in people – in our capacity for kindness – has failed us so painfully. Something else, something higher, is needed.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have witnessed such profound examples of human decency. The heroism of individuals. The selflessness of bystanders. First responders – law enforcement and medical staff, those who ran towards the danger to aid fellow humans, some publicly hailed but for the most part anonymous and unheralded.

When the police tape still fluttered in the wind all about Bondi, the imperative of social, faith-based and ethnic solidarity was admirably promoted by faith leaders. It was a call of compassion and tolerance – of bringing together rather than splitting apart in a time of targeted violence.

Consistent with the symbolism of the Festival of Lights (illumination amid gloom), there was so much appropriate evocation of the need for hope.

Togetherness, light and love was the essence of faith.

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

And yet elements of the Australian polity responded so disgustingly quickly with fragmentation, finger-pointing and accusation.

Some elected officials moved straight for the darkness, using the atrocity as a calculating chance to challenge Australia’s migration rules.

Witness the dangerous message of disunity from longstanding agitators of Australian racial division, capitalizing on the massacre before the crime scene was even cold. Then read the statements of political figures while the investigation was still active.

Politics has a daunting job to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is grieving and frightened and looking for the light and, not least, explanations to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the official terror alert was judged as probable, did such a large public Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a woefully inadequate protection? Like how could the accused attackers have six guns in the family home when the domestic intelligence organisation has so openly and repeatedly alerted of the danger of targeted attacks?

How quickly we were subjected to that cliched argument (or versions of it) that it’s individuals not guns that cause death. Naturally, both things are valid. It’s possible to at the same time pursue new ways to stop violent bigotry and keep firearms away from its possible perpetrators.

In this city of profound beauty, of clear azure skies 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 iconic Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s obscene bloodshed.

We long right now for comprehension and significance, for family, and perhaps for the consolation of beauty in art or the natural world.

This weekend many Australians are calling off Christmas party plans. Quiet contemplation will seem more appropriate.

But this is perhaps counterintuitively against instinct. For in these days of fear, anger, melancholy, bewilderment and grief we need each other now more than ever.

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

But tragically, all of the indicators are that cohesion in public life and the community will be elusive this long, draining summer.