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While the nation winds down for a customary Christmas holiday across languorous days of beach and blistering heat set to the background of Test cricket and cicada song, this year the country’s summer atmosphere seems, sadly, like none before.

It would be a significant understatement to characterize the collective temperament after the anti-Jewish terrorist attack on Jewish Australians during Bondi Hanukah celebrations as one of simple discontent.

Throughout the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of the nation's urban centers – a tenor of immediate surprise, sorrow and terror is shifting to anger and bitter polarization.

Those who had not picked up on the frequently expressed concerns of the Jewish community are now highly attuned. Just as, they are attuned to balancing the need for a much more immediate, energetic official fight against antisemitism 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 humanity is so sorely depleted. This is particularly so for those of us lucky never to have endured the animosity and fear of faith-based persecution on this land or elsewhere.

And yet the social media feeds keep spewing at us the banal instant opinions of those with inflammatory, divisive views but no sense at all of that terrifying fragility.

This is a time when I lament not having a greater spiritual belief. I mourn, because believing in humanity – in our potential for compassion – has failed us so painfully. Something else, something higher, is required.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have seen such profound instances of human goodness. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The selflessness of bystanders. Emergency personnel – police officers and paramedics, those who ran towards the gunfire to aid others, some recognised but for the most part unnamed and unsung.

When the police tape still waved wildly all about Bondi, the imperative of social, religious and ethnic solidarity was admirably championed by faith leaders. It was a call of love and tolerance – of bringing together rather than dividing in a moment of targeted violence.

In keeping with the meaning of the Festival of Lights (illumination amid gloom), there was so much appropriate reference of the need for hope.

Unity, light and compassion was the message of faith.

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

And yet elements of the political landscape reacted so disgustingly quickly with division, blame and accusation.

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

Observe the dangerous message of division from veteran fomenters of societal discord, exploiting the massacre before the crime scene was even cold. Then consider the words of political figures while the probe was still active.

Government has a formidable task to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is mourning and frightened and looking for the light and, importantly, answers to so many questions.

Like why, when the official terror alert was assessed as likely, did such a large public Hanukah event go ahead with such a grossly inadequate protection? Like how could the alleged killers have six guns in the family home when the security agency has so openly and consistently alerted of the danger of targeted attacks?

How rapidly we were subjected to that tired line (or iterations of it) that it’s individuals not weapons that kill. Of course, both things are valid. It’s possible to at the same time pursue new ways to stop violent bigotry and prevent guns away from its possible perpetrators.

In this city of immense splendor, of clear azure skies above sea and shore, the water and the coastline – our communal areas – may not seem entirely familiar again to the many who’ve observed that iconic Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s horrific violence.

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

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

But this is perhaps somewhat counterintuitive. For in these days of fear, outrage, sadness, bewilderment and grief we need each other now 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 public life and the community will be elusive this extended, enervating summer.