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While Australia winds down for a customary Christmas holiday across languorous days of coast and scorching heat accompanied by the soundtrack of sporting matches and insect sounds, this year the nation's summer atmosphere feels, sadly, like none before.

It would be a significant understatement to characterize the national temperament after the anti-Jewish violent assault on Jewish Australians during the beachside Hanukah festivities as one of simple discontent.

Throughout the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of the nation's urban centers – a tone of initial surprise, sorrow and terror is segueing to fury and deep polarization.

Those who had previously missed the often voiced concerns of the Jewish community are now acutely aware. Similarly, they are attuned to balancing the need for a much more immediate, vigorous official fight against antisemitism with the right to peacefully protest against genocide.

If ever there was a moment for a countrywide dialogue, it is now, when our belief in humanity is so deeply depleted. This is particularly so for those of us fortunate enough never to have endured the hatred and dread of religious and ethnic targeting on this land or elsewhere.

And yet the social media feeds keep churning out at us the banal instant opinions of those with blistering, polarizing stances but little understanding at all of that profound fragility.

This is a period when I regret not having a greater spiritual belief. I lament, because believing in people – in our potential for compassion – has let us down so painfully. A different source, a greater power, is needed.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have seen such extreme instances of human goodness. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The selflessness of bystanders. First responders – law enforcement and medical staff, those who charged into the gunfire to aid fellow humans, some publicly hailed but for the most part unnamed and unheralded.

When the police tape still fluttered in the wind all about Bondi, the imperative of community, religious and cultural solidarity was admirably promoted by faith leaders. It was a message of love and tolerance – of unifying rather than dividing in a moment of targeted violence.

In keeping with the symbolism of Hanukah (illumination amid darkness), there was so much fitting evocation of the need for hope.

Unity, hope and love was the message of belief.

‘Our public places may not look quite the same again.’

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

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

Observe the harmful rhetoric of division from veteran fomenters of Australian racial division, capitalizing on the massacre before the crime scene 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 bringing together a nation that is grieving and frightened and looking for the hope and, not least, explanations to so many questions.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was assessed as likely, did such a significant public Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a woefully inadequate protection? Like how could the alleged killers have multiple firearms in the residence when the security agency has so openly and repeatedly warned of the threat of targeted attacks?

How quickly we were treated to that tired argument (or iterations of it) that it’s people not guns that kill. Of course, each point are valid. It’s feasible to at the same time seek new ways to stop hate-fuelled violence and prevent guns away from its possible perpetrators.

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

We yearn right now for comprehension and meaning, for loved ones, and perhaps for the solace of beauty in art or the natural world.

This weekend many Australians are cancelling Christmas party plans. Reflective solitude will seem more in order.

But this is perhaps counterintuitively counterintuitive. For in these times of fear, anger, sadness, bewilderment and grief we need each other more than ever.

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

But sadly, all of the indicators are that unity in public life and the community will be elusive this extended, draining summer.