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While the nation winds down for a traditional Christmas holiday across languorous days of coast and blistering heat accompanied by the soundtrack of Test cricket and cicada song, this year the nation's summer atmosphere seems, unfortunately, like no other.

It would be a dramatic understatement to describe the collective disposition after the antisemitic violent assault on Jewish Australians during Bondi Hanukah festivities 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, 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 reconciling the need for a much more immediate, energetic government and institutional crackdown against antisemitism with the freedom to demonstrate against genocide.

If ever there was a moment for a national listening, it is now, when our belief in mankind is so deeply depleted. This is particularly so for those of us fortunate enough never to have experienced the hatred and dread of religious and ethnic targeting on this continent or anywhere else.

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

This is a time when I regret not having a greater spiritual belief. I mourn, because believing in people – in our potential for compassion – has let us down so painfully. A different source, a greater power, is needed.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have seen such extreme instances of human decency. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The bravery of those present. First responders – police officers and medical staff, those who ran towards the danger to help fellow humans, some publicly hailed but for the most part unnamed and unsung.

When the barrier cordon still fluttered wildly all about Bondi, the necessity of social, faith-based and cultural unity was admirably promoted by faith leaders. It was a call of love and acceptance – of bringing together rather than dividing in a moment of targeted violence.

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

Unity, hope and love was the message of faith.

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

And yet elements of the Australian polity responded so nauseatingly swiftly with fragmentation, blame and accusation.

Some elected officials gravitated straight for the darkness, using the atrocity as a calculating opportunity to question Australia’s migration rules.

Observe the harmful rhetoric of disunity from veteran fomenters of Australian racial division, exploiting the massacre before the crime scene was even cold. Then read the statements of political figures while the investigation was still active.

Government has a daunting job to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is mourning and frightened and looking for the light and, not least, answers to so many questions.

Like why, when the official terror alert was judged as likely, did such a large public Hanukah event go ahead with such a woefully inadequate security presence? Like how could the accused attackers have multiple firearms in the residence when the domestic intelligence organisation has so openly and repeatedly warned of the threat of antisemitic violence?

How quickly we were subjected to that cliched line (or versions of it) that it’s people not weapons that kill. Of course, each point are valid. It’s feasible to simultaneously pursue new ways to prevent violent bigotry and prevent firearms away from its possible perpetrators.

In this city of immense beauty, of pristine azure skies above ocean and shore, the water and the beaches – our shared community spaces – may not look quite the same again to the many who’ve noted that famous Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s obscene bloodshed.

We long right now for understanding and meaning, for loved ones, and perhaps for the consolation of beauty in culture or the natural world.

This weekend many Australians are calling off Christmas party plans. Quiet contemplation will seem more in order.

But this is perhaps somewhat against instinct. For in these days of anxiety, outrage, melancholy, confusion and grief we need each other more than ever.

The comfort 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 the community will be hard to find this long, draining summer.