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While Australia settles into for a traditional Christmas holiday during languorous days of coast and blistering heat accompanied by 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 collective temperament after the antisemitic terrorist attack on Jewish Australians during the beachside Hanukah festivities as one of mere ennui.

Across the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of Australian cities – a tenor of initial surprise, sorrow and horror is segueing to fury and deep polarization.

Those who had previously missed the frequently expressed concerns of the Jewish community are now acutely aware. Just as, they are sensitive to reconciling the need for a much more immediate, vigorous official 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 belief in mankind is so deeply depleted. This is especially so for those of us lucky never to have endured the hatred and dread of faith-based targeting on this continent or anywhere else.

And yet the social media feeds keep churning out at us the trite hot takes of those with blistering, polarizing stances but little understanding at all of that profound vulnerability.

This is a period when I regret not having a greater spiritual belief. I mourn, because having faith in people – in mankind’s capacity for kindness – has let us down so acutely. Something else, a greater power, is required.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have witnessed such profound examples of human goodness. The heroism of individuals. The selflessness of bystanders. Emergency personnel – police officers and medical staff, those who charged into the danger to help fellow humans, some publicly hailed but for the most part anonymous and unheralded.

When the police tape still waved wildly all about Bondi, the necessity of community, faith-based and cultural unity was admirably championed by religious figures. It was a message of compassion and tolerance – of unifying rather than splitting apart in a moment of antisemitic slaughter.

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

Unity, light and compassion was the essence of belief.

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

And yet elements of the Australian polity responded so nauseatingly swiftly with fragmentation, finger-pointing and recrimination.

Some elected officials gravitated straight for the darkness, using tragedy as a calculating opportunity to question Australia’s migration rules.

Witness the dangerous rhetoric of division from veteran agitators of Australian racial division, exploiting the attack before the site was even cold. Then consider the statements of leadership aspirants while the investigation was still active.

Politics has a formidable job to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is mourning and scared and seeking the hope and, importantly, explanations to so many questions.

Like why, when the official terror alert was assessed as likely, did such a significant public Hanukah event 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 publicly and consistently warned of the threat of targeted attacks?

How rapidly we were treated to that tired line (or iterations of it) that it’s people not weapons that kill. Of course, both things are true. It’s feasible to at the same time pursue new ways to stop hate-fuelled violence and keep guns away from its potential actors.

In this metropolis of immense beauty, of pristine azure skies above sea and sand, the water and the coastline – our shared community spaces – may not look entirely familiar again to the multitude who’ve noted that famous Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s obscene violence.

We yearn right now for comprehension and significance, for family, and perhaps for the consolation of aesthetics in culture or the natural world.

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

But this is perhaps somewhat against instinct. For in these days of fear, anger, melancholy, confusion and loss we require each other more than ever.

The reassurance of community – the human glue of the unity in the very word – is what we probably need most.

But sadly, all of the indicators are that unity in politics and the community will be elusive this long, draining summer.