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As Australia winds down for a customary Christmas holiday during languorous days of beach and scorching heat accompanied by the soundtrack of sporting matches and insect sounds, this year the nation's summer mood feels, sadly, like no other.

It would be a significant oversimplification to characterize the national temperament after the anti-Jewish terrorist attack on Jewish Australians during the beachside Hanukah festivities as one of mere ennui.

Across the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of Australian cities – a tenor of initial shock, sorrow and terror is shifting to fury and deep polarization.

Those who had previously missed the frequently expressed fears of the Jewish community are now highly attuned. Just as, they are sensitive to balancing the need for a far more urgent, vigorous official crackdown against anti-Jewish hatred with the freedom to peacefully protest against genocide.

If ever there was a moment for a national listening, it is now, when our belief in humanity is so sorely diminished. This is especially so for those of us lucky never to have experienced the hatred and dread of faith-based persecution on this land or elsewhere.

And yet the algorithms keep spewing at us the banal hot takes of those with blistering, divisive stances but no sense at all of that terrifying fragility.

This is a time when I regret not having a greater faith. I mourn, because having faith in humanity – in mankind’s capacity for compassion – has let us down so painfully. A different source, a greater power, is needed.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have seen such profound examples of human goodness. The heroism of individuals. The bravery of those present. Emergency personnel – police officers and paramedics, those who charged into the danger to aid fellow humans, some publicly hailed but for the most part anonymous and unheralded.

When the barrier cordon still fluttered in the wind all about Bondi, the necessity of social, religious and cultural solidarity was admirably promoted by religious figures. It was a message of compassion and tolerance – of unifying rather than splitting apart in a time of antisemitic slaughter.

Consistent with the meaning of Hanukah (light amid darkness), there was so much fitting evocation of the need for hope.

Unity, hope and love was the message of faith.

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

And yet segments of the political landscape reacted so disgustingly quickly with division, blame and accusation.

Some elected officials moved straight for the pessimism, using the atrocity as a cynical chance to question Australia’s migration rules.

Witness the dangerous rhetoric of division from longstanding agitators of Australian racial division, exploiting the massacre before the crime scene was even cold. Then read the statements of political figures while the probe was still active.

Politics has a daunting job to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is mourning and scared 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 significant open-air Hanukah event go ahead with such a grossly inadequate protection? Like how could the alleged killers have six guns in the family home when the security agency has so publicly and consistently alerted of the danger of antisemitic violence?

How rapidly we were treated to that tired line (or versions of it) that it’s people not guns that cause death. Naturally, both things are valid. It’s feasible to simultaneously pursue new ways to prevent violent bigotry and prevent firearms away from its possible actors.

In this city of profound splendor, of clear azure skies above sea and shore, the water and the beaches – our communal areas – may not seem entirely familiar again to the many who’ve observed that iconic Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s horrific bloodshed.

We long right now for comprehension and meaning, for family, and perhaps for the consolation of beauty in art or the natural world.

This weekend many Australians are cancelling holiday gathering plans. Reflective solitude will feel more appropriate.

But this is perhaps counterintuitively against instinct. For in these days of fear, outrage, melancholy, confusion and grief we require each other now more than ever.

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

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