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While the nation winds down for a traditional Christmas holiday across languorous days of beach and scorching heat set to the background of sporting matches and insect sounds, this year the country’s summer mood feels, unfortunately, like none before.

It would be a dramatic oversimplification to characterize the national temperament after the anti-Jewish terrorist attack on Jewish Australians during the beachside Hanukah festivities as one of mere ennui.

Across the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of the nation's urban centers – a tenor of immediate surprise, sorrow and terror is segueing to anger and deep division.

Those who had not picked up on the frequently expressed concerns of Australian Jews are now acutely aware. Just as, they are attuned to balancing the need for a much more immediate, vigorous government and institutional crackdown against anti-Jewish hatred 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 mankind is so sorely depleted. This is especially so for those of us lucky never to have endured the hatred and fear of faith-based persecution on this land or elsewhere.

And yet the algorithms keep churning out at us the banal instant opinions of those with blistering, divisive stances but no sense at all of that profound vulnerability.

This is a period when I lament not having a greater spiritual belief. I mourn, because having faith in people – in our potential for compassion – has let us down so acutely. Something else, something higher, is required.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have seen such extreme examples of human goodness. The heroism of individuals. The bravery of those present. Emergency personnel – police officers and medical staff, those who charged into the gunfire to aid others, some recognised but for the most part unnamed and unsung.

When the barrier cordon still waved wildly all about Bondi, the imperative of community, faith-based and ethnic solidarity was admirably promoted by faith leaders. It was a message of love and acceptance – of bringing together rather than dividing in a time of antisemitic slaughter.

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

Togetherness, hope and compassion was the message of belief.

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

And yet segments of the Australian polity reacted so nauseatingly quickly with division, blame and accusation.

Some elected officials moved straight for the darkness, using tragedy as a cynical chance to challenge Australia’s immigration policies.

Observe the dangerous message of division from veteran fomenters of Australian racial division, exploiting the attack before the site was even cold. Then consider the words of leadership aspirants while the investigation was still active.

Politics has a formidable job to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is mourning and scared 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 significant public Hanukah event go ahead with such a grossly insufficient security presence? Like how could the accused attackers have multiple firearms in the residence when the domestic intelligence organisation has so publicly and consistently warned of the threat of antisemitic violence?

How quickly we were subjected to that cliched argument (or iterations of it) that it’s people not weapons that kill. Of course, both things are valid. It’s feasible to simultaneously seek new ways to stop violent bigotry and keep firearms away from its possible perpetrators.

In this metropolis of profound splendor, of pristine azure skies above ocean and shore, the water and the beaches – our communal areas – may not look quite the same again to the many who’ve observed that iconic Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s horrific violence.

We yearn right now for understanding and significance, for family, and perhaps for the solace of beauty in art or nature.

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

But this is perhaps counterintuitively against instinct. For in these times of fear, outrage, melancholy, bewilderment and grief 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 likely need most.

But sadly, all of the portents are that cohesion in politics and society will be hard to find this extended, enervating summer.