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While the nation winds down for a traditional Christmas holiday across slow-moving days of coast and scorching heat accompanied by the soundtrack of sporting matches and cicada song, this year the country’s summer atmosphere feels, sadly, like none before.

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

Throughout the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of the nation's urban centers – a tenor of immediate surprise, grief and terror is segueing to fury and bitter division.

Those who had previously missed the frequently expressed fears of the Jewish community are now highly attuned. Similarly, they are sensitive to reconciling the need for a far more urgent, energetic official crackdown against antisemitism with the right 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 sorely diminished. This is especially so for those of us lucky never to have experienced the animosity and fear of religious and ethnic persecution on this land or elsewhere.

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

This is a period when I lament not having a greater spiritual belief. I mourn, because believing in humanity – in our potential for compassion – has failed us so painfully. Something else, 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 bravery of those present. First responders – police officers and paramedics, those who charged into the gunfire to aid others, some publicly hailed but for the most part anonymous and unheralded.

When the police tape still fluttered in the wind all about Bondi, the necessity of community, faith-based and ethnic unity was laudably promoted by faith leaders. It was a message of love and tolerance – of bringing together rather than dividing in a moment of antisemitic slaughter.

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

Unity, light and compassion was the message of faith.

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

And yet elements of the Australian polity reacted so disgustingly swiftly with division, blame and recrimination.

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

Witness the dangerous message of division from longstanding agitators of Australian racial division, capitalizing on the massacre before the site was even cold. Then consider the statements of political figures while the probe was ongoing.

Government has a daunting job to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is mourning and frightened and looking for the light and, not least, explanations to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was judged as probable, did such a significant open-air Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a grossly insufficient protection? Like how could the accused attackers have multiple firearms in the family home when the security agency has so publicly and consistently alerted of the danger of antisemitic violence?

How rapidly we were subjected to that cliched argument (or versions of it) that it’s people not guns that cause death. Naturally, both things are valid. It’s feasible to simultaneously pursue new ways to stop violent bigotry and keep firearms away from its possible actors.

In this city of profound beauty, of clear blue heavens above sea and sand, the ocean and the beaches – our shared community spaces – 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 obscene violence.

We long right now for understanding and meaning, for family, and perhaps for the solace of aesthetics in art or the natural world.

This weekend many Australians are calling off holiday gathering plans. Reflective solitude will seem more in order.

But this is perhaps somewhat counterintuitive. For in these times of anxiety, outrage, sadness, bewilderment and loss we need each other more than ever.

The comfort of community – the binding force of the unity in the very word – is what we likely need most.

But tragically, all of the portents are that cohesion in politics and the community will be hard to find this extended, draining summer.