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As the nation settles into for a customary Christmas holiday during languorous days of beach and scorching heat set to the background of Test cricket and insect sounds, this year the country’s summer mood feels, unfortunately, like none before.

It would be a dramatic oversimplification to describe the collective temperament after the anti-Jewish terrorist attack on Australian Jews during the beachside Hanukah celebrations as one of simple ennui.

Across the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of Australian cities – a tenor of initial shock, sorrow and terror is segueing to anger and deep division.

Those who had not picked up on the often voiced concerns of the Jewish community are now acutely aware. Just as, they are sensitive to balancing the need for a much more immediate, vigorous official crackdown against anti-Jewish hatred with the freedom to demonstrate against mass atrocities.

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

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

This is a time when I regret not having a stronger faith. I mourn, because having faith in humanity – in mankind’s potential for kindness – has failed us so painfully. A different source, something higher, is required.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have witnessed such profound examples of human decency. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The selflessness of bystanders. Emergency personnel – police officers and paramedics, those who charged into the gunfire to aid others, some publicly hailed but for the most part unnamed and unheralded.

When the barrier cordon still fluttered wildly all about Bondi, the imperative of social, faith-based and ethnic solidarity was admirably promoted by religious figures. It was a message of love and tolerance – of bringing together rather than dividing in a time of targeted violence.

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

Unity, light and compassion was the essence of belief.

‘Our shared community spaces may not look exactly as they did again.’

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

Some politicians gravitated straight for the pessimism, using the atrocity as a cynical chance to challenge Australia’s immigration policies.

Witness the harmful 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 investigation was ongoing.

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 large open-air Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a grossly insufficient protection? Like how could the alleged killers have multiple firearms in the family home when the security agency has so openly and repeatedly warned of the danger of antisemitic violence?

How rapidly we were subjected to that cliched line (or iterations of it) that it’s people not guns that kill. Naturally, both things are true. It’s feasible to at the same time pursue new ways to prevent violent bigotry and prevent firearms away from its possible perpetrators.

In this city of immense splendor, of pristine azure skies above ocean and shore, the ocean and the beaches – our communal areas – may not look quite the same again to the multitude who’ve observed that iconic Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s horrific bloodshed.

We yearn right now for comprehension and significance, for family, and perhaps for the solace 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 somewhat against instinct. For in these times of fear, anger, melancholy, confusion and grief we need each other now more than ever.

The comfort of community – the human glue of the unity in the very word – is what we probably need most.

But tragically, all of the indicators are that cohesion in politics and society will be hard to find this long, enervating summer.