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While Australia winds down for a traditional Christmas holiday during languorous days of beach and scorching heat accompanied by the soundtrack of Test cricket and insect sounds, this year the nation's summer mood seems, unfortunately, like none before.

It would be a significant oversimplification to characterize the national disposition after the anti-Jewish violent assault on Jewish Australians during the beachside Hanukah celebrations as one of mere ennui.

Throughout the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of Australian cities – a tone of initial surprise, grief and terror is segueing to anger and bitter polarization.

Those who had previously missed the frequently expressed fears of Australian Jews are now acutely aware. Similarly, they are attuned to balancing the need for a much more immediate, vigorous government and institutional crackdown against anti-Jewish hatred with the right to peacefully protest against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a time for a national listening, it is now, when our faith in mankind is so deeply depleted. This is particularly so for those of us lucky never to have experienced the hatred and dread of religious and ethnic persecution on this land or elsewhere.

And yet the algorithms keep spewing at us the trite hot takes of those with inflammatory, polarizing stances but little understanding at all of that profound fragility.

This is a time when I regret not having a stronger faith. I mourn, because believing in people – in mankind’s potential for compassion – has failed us so painfully. Something else, a greater power, is needed.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have witnessed such extreme examples of human decency. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The bravery of those present. First responders – police officers and medical staff, those who ran towards the gunfire to help others, some publicly hailed but for the most part unnamed and unsung.

When the police tape still fluttered in the wind all about Bondi, the necessity of community, religious and cultural unity was laudably promoted by religious figures. It was a message of love and acceptance – of unifying rather than dividing in a time of targeted violence.

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

Unity, light and love was the essence of faith.

‘Our public places may not appear quite the same again.’

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

Some elected officials moved straight for the pessimism, using tragedy as a calculating opportunity to question Australia’s migration rules.

Witness the dangerous message of division from veteran fomenters of Australian racial division, capitalizing on the attack before the crime scene was even cold. Then consider the words of leadership aspirants while the probe was ongoing.

Politics has a formidable job to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is grieving and scared and looking for the light and, not least, answers to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the official terror alert was assessed as probable, did such a significant open-air Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a woefully inadequate security presence? Like how could the alleged killers have multiple firearms in the family home when the domestic intelligence organisation has so publicly and repeatedly alerted of the danger of antisemitic violence?

How quickly we were treated to that cliched line (or versions of it) that it’s individuals not guns that kill. Naturally, each point are true. It’s possible to simultaneously seek new ways to stop hate-fuelled violence and keep firearms away from its potential actors.

In this metropolis of immense beauty, of pristine blue heavens above sea and sand, the water and the coastline – our shared community spaces – may not look entirely familiar again to the many who’ve observed that famous Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s obscene bloodshed.

We long right now for understanding and significance, for loved ones, and perhaps for the solace of beauty in culture 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 days of anxiety, outrage, sadness, bewilderment and loss we need 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 politics and society will be hard to find this long, enervating summer.