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While the nation winds down for a traditional Christmas holiday during slow-moving days of coast and scorching heat accompanied by the soundtrack of Test cricket and insect sounds, this year the nation's summer atmosphere feels, sadly, like no other.

It would be a significant understatement to characterize the national temperament after the anti-Jewish terrorist attack on Australian Jews during the beachside Hanukah celebrations as one of mere ennui.

Throughout the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of Australian cities – a tone of immediate shock, sorrow and horror is shifting to fury and deep division.

Those who had previously missed the often voiced fears of the Jewish community are now highly attuned. Just as, they are attuned to balancing the need for a much more immediate, energetic official 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 faith in mankind is so sorely diminished. This is especially so for those of us fortunate enough never to have endured the animosity and dread of religious and ethnic targeting on this land or elsewhere.

And yet the algorithms keep churning out at us the banal instant opinions of those with blistering, divisive stances but little understanding at all of that profound fragility.

This is a period when I lament not having a stronger spiritual belief. I mourn, because believing in people – in mankind’s capacity for compassion – has let us down so painfully. Something else, a greater power, is required.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have seen such extreme instances of human decency. The heroism of individuals. The bravery of those present. Emergency personnel – law enforcement and paramedics, those who ran towards the danger to help fellow humans, some publicly hailed but for the most part unnamed and unsung.

When the police tape still waved in the wind all about Bondi, the imperative of social, faith-based and ethnic solidarity was laudably championed by faith leaders. It was a call of compassion and tolerance – of unifying rather than splitting apart in a moment of antisemitic slaughter.

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

Togetherness, hope and compassion was the essence of belief.

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

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

Some politicians gravitated straight for the darkness, using tragedy as a calculating chance to question Australia’s migration rules.

Witness the harmful rhetoric of division from veteran fomenters of societal discord, capitalizing on the massacre before the crime scene was even cold. Then consider the words of political figures while the probe was ongoing.

Politics has a formidable job to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is grieving and scared and seeking the light and, importantly, answers to so many questions.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was assessed as likely, did such a large public Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a woefully inadequate protection? Like how could the accused attackers have six guns in the residence when the domestic intelligence organisation has so openly and consistently warned of the threat of antisemitic violence?

How quickly we were treated to that cliched argument (or iterations of it) that it’s individuals not guns that kill. Of course, both things are true. It’s feasible to at the same time pursue new ways to stop violent bigotry and keep guns away from its possible actors.

In this city of immense beauty, of clear blue heavens above sea and sand, the ocean and the coastline – our communal areas – may not look quite the same again to the many who’ve noted that iconic Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s horrific violence.

We long right now for understanding and significance, for loved ones, and perhaps for the consolation of aesthetics in art or nature.

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

But this is perhaps counterintuitively against instinct. For in these times of anxiety, outrage, sadness, confusion and grief we require each other more than ever.

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

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