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While the nation winds down for a customary Christmas holiday during languorous days of coast and scorching heat set to the background of Test cricket and cicada song, this year the country’s summer atmosphere feels, sadly, like no other.

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

Across the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of the nation's urban centers – a tone of initial surprise, sorrow and terror is segueing to anger and deep polarization.

Those who had not picked up on the often voiced concerns of the Jewish community are now acutely aware. Similarly, they are attuned to balancing the need for a far more urgent, vigorous government and institutional crackdown against antisemitism with the freedom to demonstrate against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a time for a national listening, it is now, when our faith in mankind is so sorely diminished. This is particularly so for those of us lucky never to have endured the animosity and dread of religious and ethnic targeting on this land or elsewhere.

And yet the algorithms keep churning out at us the trite instant opinions of those with blistering, divisive views but no sense at all of that profound fragility.

This is a period when I lament not having a greater spiritual belief. I lament, because believing in humanity – in mankind’s capacity for kindness – has let us down so painfully. A different source, something higher, is required.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have witnessed such profound examples of human goodness. The heroism of individuals. The selflessness of bystanders. First responders – police officers and paramedics, those who charged into the gunfire to help fellow humans, some publicly hailed but for the most part unnamed and unheralded.

When the barrier cordon still fluttered wildly all about Bondi, the necessity of community, religious and cultural unity was admirably promoted by religious figures. It was a call of compassion and tolerance – of unifying rather than splitting apart in a moment of antisemitic slaughter.

Consistent with the meaning of Hanukah (illumination amid gloom), there was so much appropriate evocation of the need for hope.

Unity, hope and love was the essence of faith.

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

And yet segments of the political landscape responded so nauseatingly swiftly with division, blame and accusation.

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

Witness the dangerous rhetoric of disunity from longstanding fomenters of societal discord, capitalizing on the massacre before the site was even cold. Then read the statements of political figures while the investigation was still active.

Politics has a daunting task to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is mourning and frightened and seeking the hope and, importantly, answers to so many questions.

Like why, when the official terror alert was assessed as likely, did such a significant public Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a grossly inadequate security presence? Like how could the alleged killers have multiple firearms in the family home when the security agency has so openly and consistently alerted of the danger of antisemitic violence?

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

In this city of profound beauty, of clear blue heavens above sea and shore, the water and the beaches – our shared community spaces – may not look entirely familiar again to the multitude who’ve observed that famous Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s horrific violence.

We yearn right now for comprehension and meaning, for loved ones, and perhaps for the solace of beauty in culture or nature.

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

But this is perhaps counterintuitively counterintuitive. For in these days of anxiety, outrage, sadness, confusion and loss we need each other more than ever.

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

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