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As Australia winds down for a customary Christmas holiday across slow-moving days of beach and scorching heat set to the soundtrack of sporting matches and cicada song, this year the nation's summer mood seems, sadly, like no other.

It would be a significant understatement to describe the national temperament after the anti-Jewish terrorist attack on Australian Jews during the beachside Hanukah celebrations as one of mere discontent.

Throughout the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of the nation's urban centers – a tenor of immediate surprise, grief and horror is shifting to fury and bitter polarization.

Those who had not picked up on the frequently expressed fears of the Jewish community are now acutely aware. Just as, they are sensitive to balancing the need for a much more immediate, energetic official fight 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 faith in mankind is so deeply diminished. This is especially so for those of us fortunate enough never to have experienced the animosity and fear of religious and ethnic targeting on this land or anywhere else.

And yet the algorithms keep churning out at us the trite instant opinions of those with inflammatory, divisive views but no sense at all of that profound fragility.

This is a period when I regret not having a greater faith. I mourn, because having faith in humanity – in mankind’s potential for kindness – has failed us so acutely. A different source, a greater power, is needed.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have witnessed such profound examples of human goodness. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The selflessness of bystanders. First responders – law enforcement and paramedics, those who charged into the gunfire to aid 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 community, faith-based and cultural solidarity was admirably promoted by faith leaders. It was a call of love and tolerance – of bringing together rather than dividing in a moment of antisemitic slaughter.

In keeping with the meaning of the Festival of Lights (illumination amid gloom), there was so much appropriate evocation of the need for hope.

Unity, light and love was the message of belief.

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

And yet segments of the Australian polity reacted so disgustingly swiftly with fragmentation, finger-pointing and recrimination.

Some elected officials moved straight for the darkness, using tragedy as a cynical opportunity to question Australia’s immigration policies.

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

Politics has a daunting job to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is mourning and frightened and looking for the light and, not least, explanations to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was assessed as likely, did such a significant open-air Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a grossly insufficient protection? Like how could the alleged killers have six guns in the family home when the security agency has so publicly and repeatedly warned of the danger of antisemitic violence?

How quickly we were subjected to that cliched line (or versions of it) that it’s people not weapons that kill. Of course, both things are valid. It’s possible to at the same time seek new ways to stop violent bigotry and keep guns away from its potential perpetrators.

In this metropolis of profound beauty, 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 many who’ve observed that iconic Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s horrific violence.

We long right now for understanding and significance, for family, and perhaps for the consolation of beauty in culture or nature.

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

But this is perhaps counterintuitively counterintuitive. For in these days of fear, anger, sadness, confusion and grief we require each other more than ever.

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

But sadly, all of the portents are that unity in politics and society will be elusive this long, enervating summer.