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While the nation settles into for a customary Christmas holiday across languorous days of beach and scorching heat accompanied by the background of sporting matches and cicada song, this year the nation's summer mood seems, unfortunately, like none before.

It would be a significant oversimplification to characterize the collective disposition after the antisemitic violent assault on Jewish Australians during Bondi Hanukah festivities as one of simple discontent.

Throughout the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of the nation's urban centers – a tenor of immediate surprise, sorrow and horror is segueing to anger and bitter polarization.

Those who had not picked up on the frequently expressed concerns of Australian Jews are now highly attuned. Just as, they are sensitive to balancing the need for a far more urgent, vigorous government and institutional crackdown against anti-Jewish hatred with the freedom to peacefully protest against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a time for a national listening, it is now, when our belief in mankind is so deeply diminished. This is especially so for those of us fortunate enough never to have experienced the animosity and dread 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 stances but no sense at all of that profound vulnerability.

This is a period when I regret not having a greater spiritual belief. I lament, because having faith in people – in mankind’s potential for compassion – has failed us so acutely. A different source, a greater power, is needed.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have witnessed such extreme examples of human decency. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The bravery of those present. Emergency personnel – law enforcement and paramedics, those who charged into the danger to aid fellow humans, some publicly hailed but for the most part anonymous and unsung.

When the police tape still fluttered in the wind all about Bondi, the necessity of social, faith-based and ethnic solidarity was admirably championed by faith leaders. It was a message of compassion and tolerance – of bringing together rather than splitting apart in a time of targeted violence.

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

Unity, hope and love was the message of belief.

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

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

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

Observe the harmful message of disunity from longstanding agitators of Australian racial division, capitalizing on 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 uniting a nation that is grieving and scared and looking for the light and, importantly, answers to so many questions.

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 security presence? Like how could the accused attackers have multiple firearms in the family home when the domestic intelligence organisation has so publicly and repeatedly alerted of the threat of antisemitic violence?

How rapidly we were treated to that cliched argument (or iterations of it) that it’s individuals not guns that cause death. Of course, both things are valid. It’s possible to simultaneously pursue new ways to prevent hate-fuelled violence and keep guns away from its possible perpetrators.

In this city of profound beauty, of pristine azure skies above sea and sand, the water and the coastline – our shared community spaces – may not look quite the same again to the many who’ve observed that famous Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s horrific violence.

We yearn right now for understanding and significance, for family, and perhaps for the solace of beauty in culture or nature.

This weekend many Australians are cancelling Christmas party plans. Quiet contemplation will seem more appropriate.

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

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

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