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As Australia winds down for a traditional Christmas holiday during slow-moving days of coast and scorching heat set to the background of Test cricket and insect sounds, this year the nation's summer atmosphere feels, unfortunately, like none before.

It would be a dramatic oversimplification to describe the collective disposition after the anti-Jewish terrorist attack on Jewish Australians during Bondi Hanukah festivities as one of simple discontent.

Throughout the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of Australian cities – a tone of initial shock, grief and horror is segueing to anger and deep polarization.

Those who had previously missed the often voiced fears of the Jewish community are now highly attuned. Similarly, they are attuned to reconciling the need for a much more immediate, vigorous official crackdown against anti-Jewish hatred with the right to peacefully protest against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a time for a countrywide dialogue, it is now, when our belief in mankind is so sorely diminished. This is especially so for those of us fortunate enough never to have endured the animosity and fear of faith-based targeting on this land or elsewhere.

And yet the algorithms keep spewing at us the trite hot takes of those with blistering, polarizing views but little understanding at all of that profound fragility.

This is a period when I lament not having a greater spiritual belief. I lament, because believing in humanity – in mankind’s potential for compassion – has let us down so painfully. Something else, a greater power, is needed.

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

When the barrier cordon still fluttered in the wind all about Bondi, the necessity of community, faith-based and ethnic solidarity was admirably championed by religious figures. It was a message of compassion and tolerance – of bringing together rather than splitting apart in a moment of targeted violence.

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

Togetherness, light and love was the essence of belief.

‘Our shared community spaces may not look exactly as they did again.’

And yet elements of the political landscape responded so disgustingly quickly with fragmentation, blame and accusation.

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

Observe the harmful message of division from longstanding fomenters of societal discord, capitalizing on the massacre before the crime scene was even cold. Then consider the words of leadership aspirants while the probe was still active.

Politics has a formidable task to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is mourning and scared and seeking the light and, not least, explanations to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the official terror alert was judged as likely, did such a large public Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a grossly insufficient security presence? Like how could the accused attackers have six guns in the residence when the domestic intelligence organisation has so publicly 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 people not guns that cause death. Of course, both things are valid. It’s possible to at the same time seek new ways to prevent hate-fuelled violence and prevent firearms away from its possible actors.

In this city of profound splendor, of clear blue heavens above ocean and shore, the ocean and the coastline – our communal areas – may not look quite the same again to the multitude who’ve noted that famous Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s horrific bloodshed.

We long right now for understanding and significance, for family, and perhaps for the solace of aesthetics in culture or the natural world.

This weekend many Australians are calling off holiday gathering plans. Reflective solitude will seem more appropriate.

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

But tragically, all of the indicators are that cohesion in politics and society will be hard to find this extended, draining summer.