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As Australia winds down for a traditional Christmas holiday across languorous days of coast and scorching heat set to the background of Test cricket and insect sounds, this year the nation's summer mood feels, unfortunately, like none before.

It would be a significant understatement to characterize the national disposition after the antisemitic terrorist attack on Jewish Australians during the beachside Hanukah celebrations as one of simple ennui.

Throughout the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of Australian cities – a tone of immediate surprise, sorrow and horror is shifting to fury and deep division.

Those who had not picked up on the often voiced fears of Australian Jews are now highly attuned. Just as, they are sensitive to balancing the need for a much more immediate, energetic official fight against antisemitism with the freedom to demonstrate against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a moment for a national listening, it is now, when our faith in humanity is so deeply depleted. This is especially so for those of us fortunate enough never to have endured the animosity and dread of religious and ethnic persecution on this continent or elsewhere.

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

This is a time when I regret not having a stronger spiritual belief. I lament, because having faith in people – in mankind’s potential for compassion – has let us down so painfully. Something else, a greater power, is required.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have seen such extreme examples of human decency. The heroism of individuals. The bravery of those present. First responders – law enforcement and paramedics, those who charged into the danger to aid others, some publicly hailed but for the most part unnamed and unsung.

When the police tape still waved in the wind all about Bondi, the imperative of social, religious and cultural solidarity was laudably promoted by religious figures. It was a message of love and acceptance – of bringing together rather than dividing in a moment of antisemitic slaughter.

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

Unity, light and love was the essence of faith.

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

And yet elements of the Australian polity responded so nauseatingly swiftly with fragmentation, blame and accusation.

Some politicians gravitated straight for the pessimism, using the atrocity as a calculating opportunity to question Australia’s immigration policies.

Observe the dangerous message of division from longstanding agitators of Australian racial division, exploiting the attack before the crime scene was even cold. Then read 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 frightened and looking for the hope and, importantly, explanations to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was assessed as probable, did such a large open-air Hanukah event go ahead with such a woefully insufficient protection? Like how could the alleged killers have six guns in the family home when the domestic intelligence organisation has so openly and repeatedly alerted of the threat of antisemitic violence?

How rapidly we were treated to that cliched line (or versions of it) that it’s people not weapons that kill. Of course, each point are valid. It’s possible to simultaneously seek new ways to prevent violent bigotry and keep guns away from its potential perpetrators.

In this metropolis of immense beauty, of pristine blue heavens above ocean and sand, the ocean and the coastline – our shared community spaces – may not seem entirely familiar again to the many who’ve noted that famous Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s horrific violence.

We yearn right now for comprehension and meaning, for family, and perhaps for the consolation of aesthetics in art or the natural world.

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

But this is perhaps somewhat against instinct. For in these days of fear, anger, melancholy, bewilderment and loss we need each other now more than ever.

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

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