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While the nation settles into for a traditional Christmas holiday across slow-moving days of beach and scorching heat accompanied by the background of sporting matches and cicada song, this year the country’s summer mood feels, sadly, like none before.

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

Across the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of the nation's urban centers – a tenor of initial surprise, grief and horror is shifting to anger and deep polarization.

Those who had previously missed the often voiced fears of Australian Jews 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 right to peacefully protest against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a moment for a national listening, it is now, when our faith in mankind is so deeply diminished. This is particularly so for those of us fortunate enough never to have endured the animosity and fear of religious and ethnic persecution on this continent or anywhere else.

And yet the social media feeds keep churning out at us the banal instant opinions of those with inflammatory, divisive stances but little understanding at all of that profound fragility.

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

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have witnessed such extreme instances of human goodness. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The bravery of those present. Emergency personnel – police officers and paramedics, those who charged into the danger to help fellow humans, some recognised but for the most part anonymous and unheralded.

When the barrier cordon still waved in the wind all about Bondi, the imperative of social, religious and cultural unity was laudably promoted by faith leaders. It was a message of love and tolerance – of unifying rather than dividing in a time of targeted violence.

In keeping with the meaning of Hanukah (light amid gloom), there was so much appropriate evocation of the need for lightness.

Togetherness, light and compassion was the essence of faith.

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

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

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

Observe the harmful message of disunity from veteran agitators of societal discord, exploiting the massacre before the crime scene was even cold. Then read the statements of political figures while the investigation was ongoing.

Government has a daunting job to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is grieving and frightened and seeking the light and, not least, answers to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the official terror alert was judged as likely, did such a significant open-air Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a grossly inadequate protection? Like how could the alleged killers have multiple firearms in the residence when the security agency has so publicly and consistently alerted of the danger of antisemitic violence?

How rapidly we were treated to that cliched argument (or versions of it) that it’s people not weapons that cause death. Naturally, both things are true. It’s feasible to simultaneously seek new ways to prevent violent bigotry and keep guns away from its possible perpetrators.

In this metropolis of profound beauty, of pristine blue heavens above ocean and sand, the ocean and the beaches – our communal areas – 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 long right now for comprehension and significance, for loved ones, and perhaps for the consolation of beauty in culture or nature.

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

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

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

But tragically, all of the indicators are that unity in politics and the community will be hard to find this long, draining summer.