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As the nation settles into for a customary Christmas holiday during slow-moving days of coast and blistering heat accompanied by the soundtrack of sporting matches and cicada song, this year the nation's summer mood seems, unfortunately, like no other.

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

Throughout the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of Australian cities – a tone of immediate shock, grief and terror is shifting to anger and bitter polarization.

Those who had previously missed the frequently expressed fears of Australian Jews are now acutely aware. Similarly, they are sensitive to balancing the need for a much more immediate, vigorous official fight against anti-Jewish hatred with the freedom to demonstrate against genocide.

If ever there was a time for a countrywide dialogue, it is now, when our faith in mankind is so deeply depleted. 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 anywhere else.

And yet the social media feeds keep spewing at us the trite instant opinions of those with inflammatory, polarizing views but no sense at all of that terrifying fragility.

This is a time when I lament not having a greater spiritual belief. I mourn, because having faith in humanity – in mankind’s capacity for kindness – has let us down so painfully. Something else, a greater power, is needed.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have witnessed such extreme instances of human goodness. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The selflessness of bystanders. Emergency personnel – law enforcement and paramedics, those who charged into the gunfire to help others, some recognised but for the most part unnamed and unheralded.

When the barrier cordon still waved in the wind all about Bondi, the imperative of social, religious and ethnic unity was laudably promoted by faith leaders. It was a message of love and tolerance – of bringing together rather than dividing in a time of antisemitic slaughter.

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

Togetherness, hope and love was the essence of faith.

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

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

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

Witness the dangerous message of division from longstanding fomenters of societal discord, exploiting the attack before the site was even cold. Then read the statements of political figures while the investigation was ongoing.

Government has a formidable task to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is mourning and frightened and looking for the light and, importantly, answers to so many questions.

Like why, when the official terror alert was assessed as probable, did such a large open-air Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a woefully insufficient protection? Like how could the accused attackers have six guns in the family home when the security agency has so publicly and consistently warned of the danger of antisemitic violence?

How rapidly we were treated to that tired line (or versions of it) that it’s people not guns that kill. Of course, each point are valid. It’s possible to simultaneously pursue new ways to prevent violent bigotry and keep guns away from its possible perpetrators.

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

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

This weekend many Australians are cancelling holiday gathering plans. Reflective solitude will seem more in order.

But this is perhaps somewhat counterintuitive. For in these times of fear, outrage, melancholy, bewilderment and loss we need each other now more than ever.

The comfort of community – the human glue 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, draining summer.