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While the nation winds down for a customary Christmas holiday across slow-moving days of coast and scorching heat set to the soundtrack of Test cricket and insect sounds, this year the country’s summer atmosphere feels, sadly, like no other.

It would be a dramatic understatement to describe the collective disposition after the antisemitic violent assault on Australian Jews during the beachside Hanukah festivities as one of simple discontent.

Across the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of the nation's urban centers – a tone of immediate shock, sorrow and horror is shifting to fury and bitter division.

Those who had not picked up on the frequently expressed concerns of the Jewish community are now highly attuned. Similarly, they are attuned to reconciling the need for a far more urgent, energetic official crackdown against antisemitism with the freedom to peacefully protest against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a moment for a national listening, it is now, when our belief in humanity is so sorely diminished. This is particularly so for those of us fortunate enough never to have experienced the hatred 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 trite instant opinions of those with blistering, divisive views but little understanding at all of that profound vulnerability.

This is a time when I regret not having a greater faith. I mourn, because having faith in people – in mankind’s potential for compassion – has failed us so acutely. Something else, something higher, is needed.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have witnessed such extreme instances of human decency. The heroism of individuals. The bravery of those present. Emergency personnel – police officers and paramedics, those who charged into the danger to help others, some recognised but for the most part unnamed and unsung.

When the police tape still fluttered wildly all about Bondi, the imperative of community, religious and ethnic solidarity was laudably championed by religious figures. It was a message of love and acceptance – of unifying rather than dividing in a moment of antisemitic slaughter.

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

Unity, hope and compassion was the message of faith.

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

And yet elements of the political landscape responded so nauseatingly quickly with division, finger-pointing and recrimination.

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

Witness the harmful rhetoric of disunity from longstanding fomenters of societal discord, exploiting the massacre before the crime scene was even cold. Then consider the words of leadership aspirants while the investigation was ongoing.

Politics has a formidable task to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is mourning and scared and seeking the light and, not least, answers to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was assessed as likely, did such a large public Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a grossly inadequate protection? Like how could the accused attackers have six guns in the family home when the security agency has so openly and consistently warned of the threat of targeted attacks?

How quickly we were subjected to that cliched argument (or versions of it) that it’s individuals not weapons that kill. Naturally, each point are valid. It’s possible 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 azure skies above sea and sand, the water and the beaches – our shared community spaces – may not look quite the same again to the multitude who’ve noted that famous Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s horrific bloodshed.

We yearn right now for comprehension and meaning, for loved ones, and perhaps for the solace of beauty in art or the natural world.

This weekend many Australians are cancelling Christmas party plans. Reflective solitude will seem more in order.

But this is perhaps somewhat counterintuitive. For in these times of fear, anger, melancholy, bewilderment and grief we need each other more than ever.

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

But tragically, all of the indicators are that cohesion in politics and the community will be elusive this long, draining summer.