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While Australia winds down for a customary Christmas holiday across slow-moving days of coast and scorching heat set to the soundtrack of Test cricket and cicada song, this year the nation's summer mood feels, sadly, like none before.

It would be a significant oversimplification to describe the national disposition after the antisemitic terrorist attack on Australian Jews during the beachside Hanukah festivities as one of simple discontent.

Across the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of the nation's urban centers – a tenor of immediate shock, grief and horror is segueing to anger and deep polarization.

Those who had not picked up on the often voiced concerns of the Jewish community are now highly attuned. Just as, they are attuned to reconciling the need for a much more immediate, energetic official crackdown against anti-Jewish hatred with the freedom to peacefully protest against genocide.

If ever there was a time for a national listening, it is now, when our belief in humanity is so sorely depleted. This is particularly so for those of us lucky never to have experienced the hatred and fear of religious and ethnic targeting on this continent or elsewhere.

And yet the social media feeds keep churning out at us the banal instant opinions of those with inflammatory, divisive views but little understanding at all of that terrifying vulnerability.

This is a time when I lament not having a stronger spiritual belief. I mourn, because believing in people – in mankind’s potential for compassion – has failed us so painfully. Something else, a greater power, is needed.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have witnessed such extreme examples of human goodness. The heroism of individuals. The selflessness of bystanders. Emergency personnel – police officers and medical staff, those who charged into the danger to aid fellow humans, some publicly hailed but for the most part anonymous and unsung.

When the barrier cordon still fluttered wildly all about Bondi, the imperative of social, religious and cultural unity was laudably championed by religious figures. It was a message of compassion and acceptance – of unifying rather than splitting apart in a time of antisemitic slaughter.

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

Togetherness, light and love was the message of belief.

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

And yet elements of the Australian polity responded so disgustingly swiftly with division, blame and recrimination.

Some elected officials moved straight for the pessimism, using the atrocity as a calculating chance to challenge Australia’s immigration policies.

Observe the dangerous message of disunity from veteran fomenters of Australian racial division, exploiting the attack before the crime scene was even cold. Then consider the statements of political figures while the probe was ongoing.

Politics has a formidable job to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is mourning and frightened and seeking the hope and, importantly, explanations to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the official terror alert was assessed as probable, did such a significant public Hanukah event go ahead with such a woefully inadequate security presence? Like how could the accused attackers have six guns in the family home when the domestic intelligence organisation has so openly and repeatedly warned of the threat of antisemitic violence?

How quickly we were subjected to that tired line (or iterations of it) that it’s people not weapons that kill. Naturally, each point are true. It’s possible to at the same time pursue new ways to stop violent bigotry and prevent firearms away from its possible perpetrators.

In this metropolis of immense splendor, of pristine blue heavens above sea and sand, the water and the beaches – our communal areas – may not look quite the same again to the multitude who’ve noted that famous Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s horrific bloodshed.

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

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

But this is perhaps somewhat counterintuitive. For in these days of anxiety, anger, sadness, confusion and loss we require each other more than ever.

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

But tragically, all of the indicators are that unity in public life and society will be hard to find this long, enervating summer.