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As the nation settles into for a traditional Christmas holiday during slow-moving days of coast and scorching heat set to the background of Test cricket and cicada song, this year the country’s summer atmosphere seems, unfortunately, like none before.

It would be a dramatic oversimplification to characterize the national temperament after the anti-Jewish terrorist attack on Australian Jews during Bondi Hanukah celebrations as one of mere ennui.

Throughout the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of the nation's urban centers – a tenor of immediate shock, sorrow and terror is shifting to fury and deep division.

Those who had previously missed the often voiced concerns of the Jewish community are now acutely aware. Just as, they are sensitive to reconciling the need for a far more urgent, vigorous official crackdown against anti-Jewish hatred with the freedom to demonstrate against genocide.

If ever there was a time for a national listening, it is now, when our faith in mankind is so deeply diminished. This is particularly so for those of us lucky never to have experienced the animosity and dread of faith-based persecution on this continent or anywhere else.

And yet the algorithms keep churning out at us the banal instant opinions of those with inflammatory, polarizing stances but little understanding at all of that terrifying vulnerability.

This is a time when I lament not having a stronger faith. I lament, because believing in humanity – in mankind’s capacity for kindness – has let us down so acutely. A different source, something higher, is needed.

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 – law enforcement and medical staff, those who charged into the gunfire to help fellow humans, some recognised but for the most part unnamed and unheralded.

When the barrier cordon still waved in the wind all about Bondi, the imperative of social, faith-based and cultural solidarity was laudably promoted by religious figures. It was a call of love and tolerance – of bringing together rather than dividing in a moment of antisemitic slaughter.

In keeping with the symbolism of Hanukah (light amid gloom), there was so much appropriate reference of the need for hope.

Togetherness, light and compassion was the message of belief.

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

And yet segments of the political landscape responded so disgustingly swiftly with division, finger-pointing and recrimination.

Some elected officials moved straight for the darkness, using the atrocity as a cynical chance to challenge Australia’s immigration policies.

Witness the dangerous message of disunity from longstanding fomenters of Australian racial division, capitalizing on the attack before the crime scene was even cold. Then read the statements of leadership aspirants while the investigation was ongoing.

Politics has a formidable job to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is mourning and scared and seeking the hope and, not least, explanations to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the official terror alert was judged as likely, did such a large public Hanukah event go ahead with such a grossly insufficient security presence? Like how could the alleged killers have six guns in the family home when the security agency has so publicly and consistently warned of the danger of antisemitic violence?

How rapidly we were treated to that tired line (or iterations of it) that it’s people not guns that kill. Naturally, both things are valid. It’s possible to at the same time pursue new ways to prevent violent bigotry and keep guns away from its potential perpetrators.

In this city of immense splendor, of pristine azure skies above sea and sand, the water and the coastline – our shared community spaces – may not look quite the same again to the multitude who’ve noted that famous 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 culture or nature.

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

But this is perhaps counterintuitively against instinct. For in these days of fear, anger, 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 portents are that cohesion in public life and society will be hard to find this long, draining summer.