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While the nation settles into for a customary Christmas holiday across slow-moving days of beach and scorching heat set to the background of Test cricket and insect sounds, this year the country’s summer mood seems, unfortunately, like none before.

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

Throughout the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of the nation's urban centers – a tone of immediate shock, grief and terror is shifting to fury and bitter polarization.

Those who had previously missed the often voiced fears of Australian Jews are now acutely aware. Similarly, they are sensitive to balancing the need for a much more immediate, energetic official fight against anti-Jewish hatred with the freedom to demonstrate against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a moment for a national listening, it is now, when our faith in mankind is so sorely diminished. This is particularly so for those of us lucky never to have experienced the animosity and fear of faith-based persecution on this land or anywhere else.

And yet the algorithms keep spewing at us the banal instant opinions of those with inflammatory, polarizing stances but no sense at all of that profound fragility.

This is a time when I regret not having a stronger spiritual belief. I lament, because having faith in humanity – in mankind’s capacity for compassion – has failed us so painfully. A different source, a greater power, is required.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have witnessed such profound instances of human goodness. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The selflessness of bystanders. First responders – law enforcement and paramedics, those who ran towards the gunfire to aid fellow humans, some recognised but for the most part anonymous and unsung.

When the police tape still waved in the wind all about Bondi, the necessity of social, faith-based and ethnic unity was admirably championed by religious figures. It was a message of compassion and tolerance – of unifying rather than dividing in a time of targeted violence.

In keeping with the meaning of Hanukah (light amid darkness), there was so much fitting reference of the need for hope.

Togetherness, light and love was the essence of faith.

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

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

Some elected officials gravitated straight for the pessimism, using tragedy as a cynical chance to question Australia’s migration rules.

Observe the harmful message of division from veteran agitators of societal discord, capitalizing on the attack before the crime scene was even cold. Then read the words of leadership aspirants while the investigation was ongoing.

Government has a daunting task to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is grieving and scared and seeking the light and, importantly, explanations to so many questions.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was judged as likely, did such a significant open-air Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a grossly insufficient security presence? Like how could the alleged killers have multiple firearms in the family home when the security agency has so publicly and repeatedly warned of the threat of antisemitic violence?

How quickly we were subjected to that tired argument (or versions of it) that it’s individuals not guns that kill. Of course, each point are true. It’s possible to at the same time seek new ways to stop hate-fuelled violence and keep guns away from its possible perpetrators.

In this city of profound splendor, of clear azure skies above sea and shore, the ocean and the beaches – our communal areas – may not seem quite the same again to the many who’ve noted that iconic Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s obscene bloodshed.

We long right now for comprehension and meaning, for family, and perhaps for the solace of aesthetics in culture or nature.

This weekend many Australians are cancelling Christmas party plans. Quiet contemplation will feel more in order.

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

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

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