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While the nation settles into for a customary Christmas holiday across languorous days of beach and blistering heat set to the background of Test cricket and insect sounds, this year the country’s summer atmosphere seems, sadly, like none before.

It would be a significant understatement to describe the national disposition after the antisemitic terrorist attack on Australian Jews during Bondi Hanukah celebrations as one of mere ennui.

Across the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of the nation's urban centers – a tone of initial surprise, grief and terror 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 government and institutional crackdown against antisemitism with the right 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 diminished. This is particularly so for those of us fortunate enough never to have experienced the hatred 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 blistering, divisive views but no sense at all of that profound vulnerability.

This is a time when I regret not having a greater faith. I lament, because having faith in people – in mankind’s capacity for compassion – has failed us so acutely. Something else, something higher, is needed.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have seen such extreme instances of human decency. The heroism of individuals. The bravery of those present. First responders – law enforcement and paramedics, those who ran towards the gunfire to aid fellow humans, some recognised but for the most part anonymous and unsung.

When the police tape still fluttered in the wind all about Bondi, the imperative of social, religious and ethnic unity was laudably championed by faith leaders. It was a message of compassion and tolerance – of bringing together rather than dividing in a moment of antisemitic slaughter.

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

Togetherness, hope and love was the essence of belief.

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

And yet segments of the political landscape reacted so nauseatingly swiftly with fragmentation, finger-pointing and accusation.

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

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

Politics has a formidable job to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is grieving and scared and looking for the hope and, not least, answers to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was assessed as probable, did such a significant public Hanukah event go ahead with such a woefully inadequate security presence? Like how could the accused attackers have six guns in the residence when the domestic intelligence organisation has so openly and consistently warned of the danger of antisemitic violence?

How rapidly we were subjected to that tired line (or versions of it) that it’s people not guns that cause death. Of course, both things are true. It’s feasible to at the same time seek new ways to prevent hate-fuelled violence and prevent guns away from its potential perpetrators.

In this metropolis of immense beauty, of clear blue heavens above ocean and sand, the water and the beaches – our communal areas – may not look quite the same again to the many who’ve observed that iconic Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s obscene violence.

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

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

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

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

But sadly, all of the portents are that cohesion in politics and the community will be hard to find this long, enervating summer.