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While Australia settles into for a traditional Christmas holiday during slow-moving days of beach and scorching heat accompanied by the background of sporting matches and cicada song, this year the nation's summer mood seems, sadly, like no other.

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

Throughout the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of Australian cities – a tone of immediate shock, sorrow and terror is segueing to fury and bitter polarization.

Those who had not picked up on the frequently expressed fears of Australian Jews are now acutely aware. Just as, they are attuned to balancing the need for a far more urgent, energetic government and institutional crackdown against antisemitism with the right to peacefully protest against genocide.

If ever there was a time for a national listening, it is now, when our faith in humanity is so sorely depleted. This is especially so for those of us lucky never to have experienced the hatred and dread of faith-based targeting on this continent or anywhere else.

And yet the social media feeds keep spewing at us the trite hot takes of those with blistering, divisive views but no sense at all of that terrifying fragility.

This is a period when I lament not having a stronger faith. I mourn, because believing in people – in our capacity for kindness – has failed us so acutely. Something else, a greater power, is required.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have witnessed such extreme instances of human decency. The heroism of individuals. The bravery of those present. Emergency personnel – police officers and medical staff, those who ran towards the danger to help others, some recognised but for the most part unnamed and unheralded.

When the police tape still fluttered in the wind all about Bondi, the imperative of social, religious and ethnic unity was admirably championed by faith leaders. It was a call of love and acceptance – of unifying rather than splitting apart in a time of targeted violence.

Consistent with the symbolism of Hanukah (illumination amid gloom), there was so much appropriate reference of the need for lightness.

Unity, hope and compassion was the message of belief.

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

And yet elements of the Australian polity reacted so nauseatingly swiftly with fragmentation, blame and accusation.

Some politicians moved straight for the pessimism, using the atrocity as a calculating chance to question Australia’s immigration policies.

Observe the harmful rhetoric of division from longstanding agitators of societal discord, exploiting the massacre before the crime scene was even cold. Then read the words of leadership aspirants while the investigation was still active.

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

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was assessed 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 rapidly we were subjected to that cliched line (or versions of it) that it’s people not guns that cause death. Naturally, each point are valid. It’s feasible to simultaneously pursue new ways to stop violent bigotry and keep guns away from its possible actors.

In this metropolis of profound splendor, of pristine azure skies above sea and sand, the ocean and the beaches – our shared community spaces – may not look quite the same again to the many who’ve observed that iconic Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s obscene bloodshed.

We yearn right now for comprehension and significance, for family, and perhaps for the consolation of beauty in culture or the natural world.

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

But this is perhaps counterintuitively against instinct. For in these days of anxiety, outrage, melancholy, bewilderment and grief 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 portents are that cohesion in public life and the community will be elusive this long, draining summer.