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While Australia winds down for a customary Christmas holiday during slow-moving days of beach and blistering heat set to the background of sporting matches and cicada song, this year the nation's summer mood seems, sadly, like none before.

It would be a dramatic understatement to characterize the national disposition after the anti-Jewish terrorist attack on Australian Jews during the beachside Hanukah celebrations as one of simple discontent.

Throughout the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of the nation's urban centers – a tone of initial shock, sorrow and terror is shifting to fury and bitter division.

Those who had previously missed the frequently expressed concerns of the Jewish community are now highly attuned. Similarly, they are sensitive to balancing the need for a far more urgent, energetic official fight against antisemitism with the freedom to demonstrate against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a time for a national listening, it is now, when our faith in mankind is so deeply depleted. This is particularly so for those of us fortunate enough never to have endured the hatred and fear of faith-based persecution on this continent or elsewhere.

And yet the social media feeds keep churning out at us the trite hot takes of those with inflammatory, polarizing 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 capacity 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 courageous acts of ordinary people. The selflessness of bystanders. Emergency personnel – law enforcement and medical staff, those who ran towards the gunfire to help others, some publicly hailed but for the most part anonymous and unsung.

When the barrier cordon still waved wildly all about Bondi, the imperative of social, religious and cultural solidarity was admirably championed by faith leaders. It was a call of love and tolerance – of bringing together rather than splitting apart in a moment of targeted violence.

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

Unity, hope and love was the message of belief.

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

And yet elements of the political landscape reacted so disgustingly quickly with division, finger-pointing and recrimination.

Some politicians gravitated straight for the darkness, using the atrocity as a cynical chance to question Australia’s immigration policies.

Witness the harmful rhetoric of disunity from longstanding fomenters of societal discord, capitalizing on the attack before the site was even cold. Then consider the words of leadership aspirants while the investigation was ongoing.

Government has a daunting job to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is mourning and scared and seeking the hope and, importantly, explanations to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the official terror alert was assessed as likely, did such a significant open-air Hanukah event go ahead with such a grossly insufficient protection? Like how could the alleged killers have six guns in the residence when the security agency has so openly and repeatedly warned of the threat 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, both things are valid. It’s possible to simultaneously pursue new ways to prevent hate-fuelled violence and prevent guns away from its potential perpetrators.

In this city of profound beauty, of clear blue heavens above ocean and sand, the ocean and the beaches – our communal areas – may not seem entirely familiar again to the many who’ve observed that famous Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s obscene bloodshed.

We yearn right now for comprehension and meaning, for family, and perhaps for the solace of aesthetics in art or nature.

This weekend many Australians are calling off Christmas party plans. Reflective solitude will feel more appropriate.

But this is perhaps counterintuitively counterintuitive. For in these times of fear, anger, melancholy, confusion and loss we require each other now 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 unity in politics and the community will be elusive this extended, enervating summer.