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While the nation settles into for a traditional Christmas holiday during slow-moving days of coast and blistering heat accompanied by the background of sporting matches and cicada song, this year the nation's summer mood feels, unfortunately, like none before.

It would be a dramatic understatement to describe the collective disposition after the anti-Jewish terrorist attack on Jewish Australians during the beachside Hanukah celebrations as one of mere ennui.

Across the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of Australian cities – a tenor of immediate shock, grief and terror is segueing to fury and deep division.

Those who had not picked up on the frequently expressed fears of Australian Jews are now highly attuned. Just as, they are sensitive to balancing the need for a much more immediate, energetic official fight against anti-Jewish hatred with the right to peacefully protest against genocide.

If ever there was a moment for a national listening, it is now, when our faith in mankind is so sorely depleted. This is especially so for those of us fortunate enough never to have endured the hatred and dread of faith-based targeting on this land or anywhere else.

And yet the social media feeds keep spewing at us the banal hot takes of those with inflammatory, polarizing views but little understanding at all of that terrifying vulnerability.

This is a time when I lament not having a greater spiritual belief. I lament, because believing in humanity – in our potential for kindness – has let us down so acutely. A different source, something higher, is needed.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have witnessed such extreme instances of human decency. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The selflessness of bystanders. Emergency personnel – law enforcement and medical staff, those who charged into the gunfire to aid others, some recognised but for the most part anonymous and unheralded.

When the police tape still fluttered wildly all about Bondi, the imperative of community, religious and cultural solidarity was admirably championed by faith leaders. It was a call of love and tolerance – of unifying rather than splitting apart in a moment of targeted violence.

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

Togetherness, light and compassion was the essence of belief.

‘Our shared community spaces may not appear quite the same again.’

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

Some politicians moved straight for the darkness, using the atrocity as a calculating chance to question Australia’s migration rules.

Observe the dangerous message of division from longstanding agitators 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.

Government has a formidable task to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is grieving and frightened and seeking the hope and, not least, explanations to so many questions.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was judged as probable, did such a significant public Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a grossly insufficient protection? Like how could the accused attackers have six guns in the residence when the security agency has so openly and repeatedly warned of the danger of targeted attacks?

How quickly we were treated to that tired argument (or versions of it) that it’s people not weapons that cause death. Of course, each point are true. It’s possible to simultaneously pursue new ways to prevent violent bigotry and prevent guns away from its possible actors.

In this metropolis of immense beauty, of pristine azure skies above ocean and shore, the water and the beaches – our shared community spaces – may not look entirely familiar again to the multitude who’ve noted that iconic Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s horrific bloodshed.

We yearn right now for understanding 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. Reflective solitude will seem more in order.

But this is perhaps counterintuitively against instinct. For in these times of fear, anger, melancholy, bewilderment and loss we need each other now more than ever.

The reassurance of togetherness – the binding force 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 hard to find this extended, enervating summer.