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While the nation settles into for a traditional Christmas holiday during languorous days of beach and scorching heat accompanied by the soundtrack of Test cricket and insect sounds, this year the country’s summer mood seems, unfortunately, like none before.

It would be a significant oversimplification to characterize the national disposition after the antisemitic terrorist attack on Jewish Australians during Bondi Hanukah festivities as one of mere discontent.

Across the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of Australian cities – a tenor of immediate surprise, grief and horror is shifting to anger and bitter division.

Those who had previously missed the often voiced fears of Australian Jews are now highly attuned. Similarly, they are sensitive to balancing the need for a much more immediate, vigorous government and institutional crackdown against antisemitism with the freedom to peacefully protest against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a moment for a national listening, it is now, when our faith in mankind is so deeply depleted. This is especially so for those of us lucky never to have endured the animosity and dread of faith-based targeting on this land or elsewhere.

And yet the social media feeds keep churning out at us the banal instant opinions of those with inflammatory, divisive stances but little understanding at all of that terrifying fragility.

This is a time when I lament not having a greater spiritual belief. I mourn, because believing in people – in mankind’s potential for kindness – has failed us so painfully. A different source, something higher, is required.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have witnessed such profound instances of human decency. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The selflessness of bystanders. Emergency personnel – law enforcement and paramedics, those who ran towards the danger to aid others, some recognised but for the most part anonymous and unsung.

When the police tape still waved wildly all about Bondi, the necessity of community, faith-based and cultural unity was laudably championed by faith leaders. It was a call of compassion and acceptance – of bringing together rather than dividing in a time of antisemitic slaughter.

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

Togetherness, hope and compassion was the essence of faith.

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

And yet elements of the political landscape reacted so nauseatingly swiftly with fragmentation, finger-pointing and accusation.

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

Observe the harmful message of disunity from veteran agitators of Australian racial division, exploiting the massacre before the site was even cold. Then consider the statements of leadership aspirants while the investigation was still active.

Politics has a formidable task to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is grieving and frightened and looking for the hope and, not least, explanations to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the official terror alert was judged as likely, did such a significant public Hanukah event go ahead with such a grossly insufficient protection? 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 danger of antisemitic violence?

How quickly we were treated to that cliched argument (or versions of it) that it’s individuals not guns that cause death. Of course, each point are true. It’s possible to simultaneously pursue new ways to stop violent bigotry and prevent guns away from its possible perpetrators.

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

We yearn right now for understanding and significance, for loved ones, and perhaps for the solace of aesthetics in art or the natural world.

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

But this is perhaps somewhat against instinct. For in these times of fear, anger, melancholy, confusion and loss we require each other more than ever.

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

But sadly, all of the indicators are that unity in public life and the community will be hard to find this extended, draining summer.