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As the nation settles into for a customary Christmas holiday during languorous days of beach and scorching heat accompanied by the background of Test cricket and cicada song, this year the nation's summer atmosphere feels, sadly, like none before.

It would be a dramatic oversimplification to describe the national disposition after the anti-Jewish terrorist attack on Australian Jews during Bondi Hanukah festivities as one of mere ennui.

Across the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of the nation's urban centers – a tone of initial surprise, sorrow and horror is segueing to anger and deep polarization.

Those who had previously missed the frequently expressed concerns of Australian Jews are now acutely aware. Just as, they are attuned to balancing the need for a much more immediate, vigorous official fight 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 sorely diminished. This is especially so for those of us lucky never to have endured the animosity and fear of religious and ethnic persecution on this continent or elsewhere.

And yet the algorithms keep churning out at us the banal hot takes of those with inflammatory, divisive views but no sense at all of that terrifying fragility.

This is a time when I regret not having a stronger faith. I mourn, because believing in people – in our potential for compassion – has failed us so acutely. Something else, a greater power, 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 selflessness of bystanders. Emergency personnel – police officers and paramedics, those who charged into the gunfire to help others, some publicly hailed but for the most part anonymous and unsung.

When the police tape still waved in the wind all about Bondi, the imperative of community, faith-based and ethnic solidarity was laudably promoted by religious figures. It was a call of love and tolerance – of bringing together rather than splitting apart in a time of antisemitic slaughter.

Consistent with the symbolism of Hanukah (illumination amid gloom), there was so much appropriate reference of the need for lightness.

Unity, light and love was the essence of faith.

‘Our shared community spaces may not appear exactly as they did again.’

And yet segments of the political landscape responded so disgustingly swiftly with division, blame and recrimination.

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

Observe the harmful rhetoric of division from veteran fomenters of societal discord, capitalizing on the massacre before the site was even cold. Then read the statements of leadership aspirants while the investigation was ongoing.

Politics has a formidable job to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is mourning and frightened and seeking the light and, not least, explanations to so many questions.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was judged as probable, did such a large open-air Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a woefully inadequate protection? Like how could the accused attackers have multiple firearms in the family home when the domestic intelligence organisation has so openly and repeatedly warned of the threat of targeted attacks?

How quickly we were subjected 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 at the same time seek new ways to prevent violent bigotry and keep firearms away from its possible actors.

In this city of immense beauty, of pristine blue heavens above ocean and shore, the ocean and the coastline – our shared community spaces – may not seem entirely familiar again to the many who’ve observed that famous Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s horrific bloodshed.

We long right now for comprehension and significance, for loved ones, and perhaps for the consolation of aesthetics in art or nature.

This weekend many Australians are calling off Christmas party plans. Reflective solitude will feel more appropriate.

But this is perhaps counterintuitively counterintuitive. For in these days of fear, anger, sadness, confusion and loss we require each other now more than ever.

The comfort of togetherness – the human glue of the unity in the very word – is what we probably need most.

But sadly, all of the portents are that unity in politics and society will be elusive this extended, enervating summer.