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While Australia settles into for a customary Christmas holiday during slow-moving days of coast and scorching heat set to the soundtrack of Test cricket and cicada song, this year the nation's summer atmosphere feels, sadly, like none before.

It would be a dramatic understatement to describe the collective temperament after the antisemitic terrorist attack on Australian Jews during the beachside Hanukah celebrations as one of simple discontent.

Throughout the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of Australian cities – a tenor of immediate shock, grief and terror is segueing to fury and deep division.

Those who had previously missed the often voiced fears of the Jewish community are now highly attuned. Similarly, they are sensitive to reconciling the need for a far more urgent, energetic government and institutional fight against anti-Jewish hatred with the right to peacefully protest against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a time for a national listening, it is now, when our belief in humanity is so sorely diminished. This is particularly so for those of us fortunate enough never to have endured the animosity and fear of faith-based targeting on this land or elsewhere.

And yet the social media feeds keep churning out at us the trite hot takes of those with blistering, polarizing views but little understanding at all of that terrifying vulnerability.

This is a period when I lament not having a greater spiritual belief. I mourn, because having faith in humanity – in mankind’s potential for kindness – has failed us so painfully. A different source, a greater power, is required.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have seen such profound instances of human decency. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The selflessness of bystanders. Emergency personnel – police officers and medical staff, those who charged into the danger to aid fellow humans, some recognised but for the most part unnamed and unsung.

When the barrier cordon still fluttered wildly all about Bondi, the imperative of social, faith-based and cultural solidarity was admirably promoted by religious figures. It was a call of compassion and acceptance – of unifying rather than dividing in a moment of antisemitic slaughter.

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

Unity, hope and love was the message of belief.

‘Our shared community spaces may not appear quite the same again.’

And yet segments of the Australian polity responded so disgustingly quickly with fragmentation, blame and accusation.

Some politicians moved straight for the darkness, using tragedy as a cynical chance to question Australia’s migration rules.

Witness the dangerous rhetoric of division from veteran agitators of Australian racial division, capitalizing on the massacre before the site was even cold. Then read the words of leadership aspirants while the probe was ongoing.

Politics has a formidable job to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is mourning and scared and seeking the hope and, importantly, answers to so many questions.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was judged as probable, did such a large open-air Hanukah event go ahead with such a grossly inadequate security presence? Like how could the accused attackers have six guns in the residence when the security agency has so publicly and repeatedly warned of the threat of antisemitic violence?

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

In this metropolis of profound beauty, of clear azure skies above sea and shore, the water and the beaches – our communal areas – may not look entirely familiar again to the multitude who’ve observed that famous Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s horrific violence.

We long right now for understanding and significance, for loved ones, and perhaps for the solace of beauty in culture or nature.

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

But this is perhaps counterintuitively counterintuitive. For in these times of anxiety, outrage, sadness, confusion and loss we require each other more than ever.

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

But tragically, all of the portents are that unity in public life and society will be elusive this extended, draining summer.