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As Australia winds down for a traditional Christmas holiday across slow-moving days of coast and blistering heat accompanied by the background of sporting matches and cicada song, this year the country’s summer mood feels, sadly, like none before.

It would be a significant oversimplification to describe the national disposition after the anti-Jewish terrorist attack on Jewish Australians during the beachside Hanukah celebrations as one of mere discontent.

Throughout the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of the nation's urban centers – a tone of initial surprise, sorrow and horror is shifting to fury and bitter polarization.

Those who had previously missed the frequently expressed concerns of Australian Jews are now highly attuned. Similarly, they are attuned to balancing the need for a far more urgent, vigorous government and institutional crackdown against anti-Jewish hatred with the right to peacefully protest against genocide.

If ever there was a moment for a national listening, it is now, when our belief in mankind is so sorely depleted. This is particularly so for those of us fortunate enough never to have experienced the hatred and dread of religious and ethnic persecution on this land or elsewhere.

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

This is a time when I regret not having a stronger faith. I lament, because having faith in people – in mankind’s potential for compassion – has failed us so acutely. A different source, something higher, is required.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have seen such profound examples of human goodness. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The selflessness of bystanders. First responders – police officers and medical staff, those who charged into the gunfire to help fellow humans, some recognised but for the most part unnamed and unsung.

When the barrier cordon still fluttered wildly all about Bondi, the necessity of community, religious and ethnic solidarity was admirably 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 meaning of Hanukah (illumination amid darkness), there was so much appropriate evocation of the need for lightness.

Togetherness, hope and compassion was the message of faith.

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

And yet elements of the Australian polity reacted so nauseatingly quickly with fragmentation, finger-pointing and accusation.

Some elected officials moved straight for the darkness, using tragedy as a calculating opportunity to question Australia’s immigration policies.

Witness the harmful message of disunity from veteran fomenters of societal discord, exploiting the attack before the site was even cold. Then consider the words of political figures while the probe was still active.

Government has a daunting task to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is grieving and frightened and seeking the hope and, importantly, explanations to so many questions.

Like why, when the official terror alert was judged as probable, did such a large open-air Hanukah event go ahead with such a grossly inadequate protection? Like how could the accused attackers have multiple firearms in the family home when the security agency has so publicly and repeatedly alerted of the danger of targeted attacks?

How rapidly we were subjected to that tired argument (or versions of it) that it’s people not guns that cause death. Of course, each point are valid. It’s possible to at the same time seek new ways to prevent violent bigotry and keep firearms away from its potential actors.

In this city of profound splendor, of pristine azure skies above ocean and shore, the ocean and the beaches – our shared community spaces – may not seem entirely familiar again to the multitude who’ve noted that iconic Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s obscene violence.

We long right now for comprehension and meaning, for loved ones, and perhaps for the solace of aesthetics in art or nature.

This weekend many Australians are calling off Christmas party plans. Quiet contemplation will seem more in order.

But this is perhaps somewhat counterintuitive. 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 probably need most.

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