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While Australia winds down for a customary Christmas holiday during slow-moving days of beach and blistering heat accompanied by the soundtrack of Test cricket and cicada song, this year the nation's summer mood seems, sadly, like none before.

It would be a dramatic understatement to characterize the collective temperament after the anti-Jewish violent assault on Australian Jews during Bondi Hanukah festivities as one of simple ennui.

Throughout the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of the nation's urban centers – a tone of immediate shock, sorrow and terror is segueing to anger and deep division.

Those who had previously missed the often voiced fears of the Jewish community are now acutely aware. Similarly, they are attuned to balancing the need for a much more immediate, vigorous government and institutional fight against antisemitism with the right to demonstrate against mass atrocities.

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

And yet the social media feeds keep churning out at us the banal instant opinions of those with blistering, polarizing stances but no sense at all of that terrifying fragility.

This is a time when I regret not having a greater spiritual belief. I lament, because believing in people – in our capacity for compassion – has let us down so painfully. A different source, something higher, is required.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have seen such profound instances of human decency. The heroism of individuals. The selflessness of bystanders. First responders – police officers and paramedics, those who charged into the danger to aid others, some publicly hailed but for the most part unnamed and unsung.

When the barrier cordon still waved in the wind all about Bondi, the necessity of community, faith-based and cultural unity was laudably promoted by religious figures. It was a message of compassion and acceptance – of unifying rather than splitting apart in a time of antisemitic slaughter.

In keeping with the symbolism of Hanukah (illumination amid darkness), there was so much fitting evocation of the need for lightness.

Unity, light and compassion was the message of faith.

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

And yet segments of the Australian polity responded so disgustingly quickly with fragmentation, blame and recrimination.

Some elected officials gravitated straight for the darkness, using tragedy as a cynical opportunity to challenge Australia’s immigration policies.

Witness the dangerous rhetoric of disunity from longstanding fomenters of Australian racial division, capitalizing on the massacre before the crime scene was even cold. Then consider the statements of political figures while the probe was still active.

Government has a formidable task to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is mourning and scared and looking for the light and, importantly, explanations to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the official terror alert was assessed as probable, did such a large public Hanukah event go ahead with such a woefully insufficient protection? Like how could the accused attackers have multiple firearms in the residence when the domestic intelligence organisation has so openly and repeatedly alerted of the threat of targeted attacks?

How quickly we were subjected to that cliched line (or versions of it) that it’s individuals not weapons that cause death. Naturally, each point are true. It’s possible to simultaneously seek new ways to prevent violent bigotry and prevent firearms away from its possible perpetrators.

In this city of profound beauty, of pristine blue heavens above ocean and shore, the water and the beaches – our shared community spaces – may not seem entirely familiar again to the multitude who’ve noted that famous Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s horrific bloodshed.

We yearn right now for comprehension and significance, 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 in order.

But this is perhaps somewhat against instinct. For in these times of fear, outrage, sadness, confusion and grief we require each other more than ever.

The reassurance of togetherness – the human glue of the unity in the very word – is what we probably need most.

But tragically, all of the indicators are that cohesion in politics and society will be elusive this long, draining summer.