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As Australia winds down for a customary Christmas holiday across slow-moving days of beach and blistering heat set to the soundtrack of Test cricket and insect sounds, this year the country’s summer mood feels, unfortunately, like none before.

It would be a significant oversimplification to characterize the collective temperament after the antisemitic 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 the nation's urban centers – a tone of immediate shock, grief and horror is segueing to fury and bitter division.

Those who had previously missed the often voiced concerns of the Jewish community are now acutely aware. Similarly, they are attuned to reconciling the need for a much more immediate, energetic official fight 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 diminished. This is particularly so for those of us lucky never to have experienced the animosity and dread of faith-based persecution on this land or anywhere else.

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

This is a period when I regret not having a greater spiritual belief. I lament, because believing in people – in mankind’s potential for kindness – has let us down so acutely. A different source, something higher, is needed.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have seen such extreme examples of human goodness. The heroism of individuals. The bravery of those present. First responders – law enforcement and paramedics, those who charged into the danger to help fellow humans, some publicly hailed but for the most part unnamed and unheralded.

When the police tape still waved in the wind all about Bondi, the imperative of community, religious and cultural solidarity was admirably promoted by religious figures. It was a call of love and tolerance – of bringing together rather than dividing in a time of targeted violence.

In keeping with the meaning of Hanukah (illumination amid darkness), there was so much fitting evocation of the need for lightness.

Unity, light and compassion was the essence of faith.

‘Our public places may not look quite the same again.’

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

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

Observe the harmful message of division from veteran fomenters of societal discord, exploiting the massacre before the site was even cold. Then read the words of political figures while the investigation was still active.

Government has a formidable job to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is mourning and scared and looking for the light and, importantly, answers to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the official terror alert was assessed as probable, did such a significant public Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a woefully insufficient security presence? Like how could the alleged killers have six guns in the family home when the domestic intelligence organisation has so openly and consistently alerted of the threat of antisemitic violence?

How quickly we were treated to that tired line (or versions of it) that it’s people not weapons that cause death. Naturally, each point are valid. It’s feasible to at the same time pursue new ways to stop hate-fuelled violence and keep guns away from its possible perpetrators.

In this metropolis of profound beauty, of clear azure skies above sea and shore, the ocean and the coastline – our shared community spaces – may not seem entirely familiar again to the multitude who’ve noted that famous 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 beauty in art or the natural world.

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

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

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

But sadly, all of the indicators are that cohesion in public life and society will be elusive this extended, draining summer.