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While Australia settles into for a customary Christmas holiday during languorous days of beach and scorching heat accompanied by the background of Test cricket and insect sounds, this year the nation's summer atmosphere feels, unfortunately, like none before.

It would be a dramatic understatement to characterize the collective temperament after the anti-Jewish violent assault 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 tenor of immediate shock, grief and terror is shifting to fury and bitter polarization.

Those who had not picked up on the often voiced concerns of the Jewish community are now acutely aware. Just as, they are attuned to balancing the need for a far more urgent, vigorous government and institutional crackdown against anti-Jewish hatred with the right to peacefully protest against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a moment for a countrywide dialogue, it is now, when our belief in humanity is so sorely depleted. This is especially so for those of us lucky never to have experienced the animosity and fear of faith-based targeting on this continent or elsewhere.

And yet the social media feeds keep churning out at us the banal instant opinions of those with blistering, divisive views but no sense at all of that terrifying vulnerability.

This is a period when I regret not having a stronger spiritual belief. I mourn, because having faith in humanity – in our capacity for compassion – has let us down so painfully. A different source, something higher, is needed.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have seen such extreme examples of human decency. The heroism of individuals. The selflessness of bystanders. First responders – police officers and paramedics, those who ran towards the danger to aid fellow humans, some publicly hailed but for the most part anonymous and unsung.

When the police tape still fluttered in the wind all about Bondi, the imperative of social, faith-based and cultural unity was admirably promoted by religious figures. It was a call of love and acceptance – of bringing together rather than splitting apart in a moment of targeted violence.

In keeping with the symbolism of the Festival of Lights (light amid darkness), there was so much fitting reference of the need for lightness.

Unity, light and compassion was the message of faith.

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

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

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

Witness the dangerous message of division from longstanding agitators of societal discord, capitalizing on the massacre before the crime scene was even cold. Then consider the words of political figures while the investigation was ongoing.

Politics has a daunting job to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is grieving and scared and looking for the hope and, importantly, answers to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was judged as likely, did such a significant public Hanukah event go ahead with such a woefully insufficient protection? Like how could the alleged killers have six guns in the residence when the domestic intelligence organisation has so openly and consistently warned of the threat of antisemitic violence?

How rapidly we were subjected to that tired line (or iterations of it) that it’s individuals not guns that kill. Naturally, both things are valid. It’s feasible to simultaneously pursue new ways to prevent violent bigotry and prevent firearms away from its potential actors.

In this metropolis of immense splendor, of clear blue heavens above sea and sand, the ocean and the coastline – our communal areas – may not seem quite the same again to the multitude who’ve observed that famous Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s obscene bloodshed.

We yearn right now for comprehension and meaning, for loved ones, and perhaps for the consolation of aesthetics in art or nature.

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 days of fear, anger, sadness, bewilderment and grief 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 probably need most.

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