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As Australia settles into for a traditional Christmas holiday during slow-moving days of beach and blistering heat accompanied by the background of Test cricket and insect sounds, this year the nation's summer mood feels, sadly, like none before.

It would be a dramatic understatement to characterize the national disposition after the antisemitic terrorist attack on Jewish Australians during Bondi Hanukah celebrations as one of simple discontent.

Throughout the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of the nation's urban centers – a tenor of immediate shock, sorrow and horror is segueing to anger and bitter polarization.

Those who had previously missed the frequently expressed concerns of the Jewish community are now highly attuned. Similarly, they are sensitive to balancing the need for a much more immediate, vigorous government and institutional crackdown against anti-Jewish hatred with the freedom to peacefully protest against genocide.

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 animosity and fear of religious and ethnic persecution on this land or anywhere else.

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

This is a period when I regret not having a greater faith. I mourn, because believing in humanity – in our potential for compassion – has let us down so painfully. Something else, a greater power, is required.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have witnessed such profound instances of human goodness. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The bravery of those present. First responders – police officers and medical staff, those who ran towards the danger to help others, some recognised but for the most part unnamed and unsung.

When the police tape still fluttered in the wind all about Bondi, the imperative of community, faith-based and ethnic solidarity was laudably promoted by religious figures. It was a message of love and tolerance – of unifying rather than dividing in a time of antisemitic slaughter.

In keeping with the meaning of Hanukah (light amid darkness), there was so much fitting reference of the need for lightness.

Unity, hope and compassion was the essence of belief.

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

And yet elements of the Australian polity responded so nauseatingly quickly with division, finger-pointing and accusation.

Some politicians gravitated straight for the pessimism, using tragedy as a cynical opportunity to challenge Australia’s migration rules.

Observe the dangerous message of division from veteran fomenters of Australian racial division, exploiting the attack before the crime scene was even cold. Then read the words of political figures while the investigation was still active.

Government has a formidable job to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is grieving and frightened and seeking the light and, not least, explanations 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 woefully inadequate security presence? Like how could the alleged killers have six guns in the family home when the domestic intelligence organisation has so openly and repeatedly warned of the threat of antisemitic violence?

How quickly we were subjected to that tired line (or iterations of it) that it’s individuals not weapons that kill. Of course, both things are valid. It’s feasible to at the same time seek new ways to prevent hate-fuelled violence and prevent guns away from its possible perpetrators.

In this metropolis of immense beauty, of pristine azure skies above sea and sand, the ocean and the coastline – our communal areas – may not seem entirely familiar again to the multitude who’ve observed that iconic Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s horrific violence.

We long right now for understanding and meaning, for family, and perhaps for the consolation of beauty in art or nature.

This weekend many Australians are cancelling holiday gathering plans. Quiet contemplation will seem more in order.

But this is perhaps counterintuitively counterintuitive. For in these days of fear, outrage, melancholy, confusion and grief we require each other 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 cohesion in public life and society will be hard to find this extended, enervating summer.