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As Australia settles into for a customary Christmas holiday across languorous days of coast and scorching heat set to the soundtrack of sporting matches and cicada song, this year the country’s summer atmosphere feels, sadly, like no other.

It would be a dramatic oversimplification to describe the collective disposition after the anti-Jewish terrorist attack on Jewish Australians during the beachside Hanukah celebrations as one of simple ennui.

Across the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of the nation's urban centers – a tone of immediate shock, sorrow and terror is segueing to fury and deep division.

Those who had not picked up on the often voiced concerns of the Jewish community are now highly attuned. Similarly, they are sensitive to reconciling the need for a much more immediate, energetic government and institutional crackdown against antisemitism with the right to demonstrate against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a time for a national listening, it is now, when our faith in humanity is so deeply depleted. This is particularly so for those of us lucky never to have endured the hatred and fear of religious and ethnic persecution on this land or anywhere else.

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

This is a time when I lament not having a greater spiritual belief. I lament, because believing in people – in mankind’s capacity for kindness – has failed us so acutely. Something else, something higher, is needed.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have witnessed such profound instances of human decency. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The selflessness of bystanders. Emergency personnel – law enforcement and paramedics, those who ran towards the gunfire to aid others, some publicly hailed but for the most part anonymous and unheralded.

When the police tape still fluttered in the wind all about Bondi, the imperative of social, religious and ethnic solidarity was admirably championed by religious figures. It was a call of compassion and tolerance – of unifying rather than splitting apart in a moment of antisemitic slaughter.

Consistent with the symbolism of the Festival of Lights (light amid gloom), there was so much fitting evocation of the need for hope.

Unity, light and compassion was the essence of belief.

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

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

Some elected officials moved straight for the pessimism, using the atrocity as a cynical opportunity to question Australia’s migration rules.

Witness the harmful message of disunity from longstanding agitators of Australian racial division, capitalizing on the attack before the crime scene was even cold. Then consider the words of political figures while the investigation was still active.

Government has a formidable job to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is grieving and scared and looking for the hope and, importantly, answers to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was assessed as probable, did such a significant public Hanukah event go ahead with such a grossly inadequate security presence? Like how could the alleged killers have multiple firearms in the family home when the domestic intelligence organisation has so openly and consistently alerted of the threat of targeted attacks?

How quickly we were subjected to that cliched line (or versions of it) that it’s individuals not guns that kill. Of course, each point are true. It’s possible to simultaneously seek new ways to prevent hate-fuelled violence and keep guns away from its potential actors.

In this metropolis of immense splendor, of pristine azure skies above ocean and shore, the ocean and the beaches – our shared community spaces – may not seem entirely familiar again to the many who’ve noted that famous Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s horrific bloodshed.

We yearn right now for comprehension and meaning, for loved ones, and perhaps for the solace of aesthetics in art or nature.

This weekend many Australians are cancelling holiday gathering plans. Quiet contemplation will seem more appropriate.

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

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

But sadly, all of the portents are that unity in public life and the community will be hard to find this extended, enervating summer.