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As the nation settles into for a traditional Christmas holiday across slow-moving days of coast and scorching heat set to the background of sporting matches and cicada song, this year the nation's summer mood seems, sadly, like no other.

It would be a dramatic understatement to characterize the collective disposition after the anti-Jewish terrorist attack on Australian Jews during the beachside Hanukah festivities as one of mere discontent.

Across the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of Australian cities – a tenor of immediate surprise, sorrow and horror is segueing to anger and bitter division.

Those who had not picked up on the frequently expressed fears of the Jewish community are now highly attuned. Similarly, they are attuned to balancing the need for a far more urgent, vigorous official fight against anti-Jewish hatred with the right to demonstrate against genocide.

If ever there was a time for a countrywide dialogue, it is now, when our faith in mankind is so sorely depleted. This is especially so for those of us lucky never to have endured the animosity and fear of religious and ethnic targeting on this land or anywhere else.

And yet the social media feeds keep spewing at us the banal hot takes of those with inflammatory, divisive views but no sense at all of that terrifying vulnerability.

This is a period when I regret not having a greater faith. I mourn, because having faith in people – in mankind’s capacity for kindness – has let us down so painfully. Something else, something higher, is needed.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have seen such extreme examples of human decency. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The bravery of those present. Emergency personnel – law enforcement and paramedics, those who ran towards the gunfire to aid others, some publicly hailed but for the most part unnamed and unsung.

When the police tape still waved in the wind all about Bondi, the imperative of social, faith-based and cultural solidarity was admirably promoted by religious figures. It was a message of love and tolerance – of unifying 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 lightness.

Togetherness, light and compassion was the essence of faith.

‘Our public places may not appear exactly as they did again.’

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

Some elected officials moved straight for the pessimism, using the atrocity as a cynical chance to question Australia’s immigration policies.

Witness the dangerous rhetoric of division from veteran agitators of societal discord, capitalizing on the massacre before the crime scene was even cold. Then consider the words of leadership aspirants while the investigation was ongoing.

Politics has a daunting job to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is mourning and scared and seeking the light and, not least, answers to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the official terror alert was assessed as probable, did such a large open-air Hanukah event go ahead with such a grossly insufficient protection? Like how could the accused attackers have multiple firearms in the residence when the domestic intelligence organisation has so openly and repeatedly alerted of the threat of targeted attacks?

How rapidly we were treated to that tired line (or versions of it) that it’s individuals not guns that kill. Naturally, each point are true. It’s feasible to simultaneously seek new ways to prevent hate-fuelled violence and keep guns away from its potential actors.

In this metropolis of immense splendor, of clear azure skies above sea and sand, the ocean and the beaches – our shared community spaces – may not seem quite the same again to the multitude who’ve noted that iconic Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s obscene violence.

We yearn right now for understanding and meaning, for family, and perhaps for the consolation of aesthetics in culture or nature.

This weekend many Australians are cancelling holiday gathering plans. Quiet contemplation will feel more appropriate.

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

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

But sadly, all of the indicators are that cohesion in public life and the community will be hard to find this extended, draining summer.