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While Australia winds down for a traditional Christmas holiday during languorous days of coast and blistering heat set to the background of sporting matches and cicada song, this year the nation's summer atmosphere feels, sadly, like none before.

It would be a significant understatement to describe the collective disposition after the antisemitic terrorist attack on Jewish Australians during Bondi Hanukah festivities as one of simple discontent.

Throughout the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of Australian cities – a tenor of immediate surprise, grief and terror is segueing to fury and deep division.

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

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

And yet the social media feeds keep spewing at us the trite instant opinions of those with inflammatory, divisive views but little understanding at all of that terrifying fragility.

This is a time when I lament not having a greater spiritual belief. I lament, because having faith in people – in our capacity for kindness – has failed us so acutely. Something else, a greater power, is needed.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have seen such profound examples of human goodness. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The selflessness of bystanders. First responders – police officers and medical staff, those who charged into the danger to help others, some publicly hailed but for the most part unnamed and unsung.

When the barrier cordon still waved wildly all about Bondi, the necessity of social, religious and cultural unity was laudably promoted by faith leaders. It was a message of compassion and acceptance – of unifying rather than splitting apart in a time of targeted violence.

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

Togetherness, light and compassion was the essence of faith.

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

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

Some politicians moved straight for the pessimism, using the atrocity as a calculating chance to question Australia’s migration rules.

Witness the harmful message of disunity from veteran fomenters of Australian racial division, exploiting the attack before the site was even cold. Then consider the words of political figures while the probe was still active.

Government has a formidable task to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is grieving and scared and looking for the hope and, not least, explanations to so many questions.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was judged as probable, did such a large public Hanukah event go ahead with such a grossly inadequate protection? Like how could the accused attackers have multiple firearms in the residence when the security agency has so openly and repeatedly alerted of the danger of antisemitic violence?

How quickly we were subjected to that tired line (or iterations of it) that it’s individuals not weapons that kill. Of course, both things are true. It’s feasible to simultaneously pursue new ways to prevent hate-fuelled violence and prevent firearms away from its potential perpetrators.

In this metropolis of immense beauty, of clear azure skies above sea and sand, the ocean and the beaches – our communal areas – may not look entirely familiar again to the multitude who’ve noted that iconic Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s obscene violence.

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

This weekend many Australians are calling off holiday gathering plans. Reflective solitude will seem more in order.

But this is perhaps somewhat against instinct. For in these days of fear, outrage, sadness, bewilderment 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 tragically, all of the indicators are that cohesion in public life and society will be hard to find this long, draining summer.