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While the nation winds down for a customary Christmas holiday during languorous days of coast and scorching heat set to the background of Test cricket and insect sounds, this year the nation's summer atmosphere feels, unfortunately, like none before.

It would be a dramatic oversimplification to characterize the national disposition after the antisemitic terrorist attack on Australian Jews during Bondi Hanukah festivities as one of mere discontent.

Across the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of Australian cities – a tone of initial surprise, grief and horror is segueing to anger and bitter division.

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 far more urgent, vigorous government and institutional 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 belief in mankind is so sorely diminished. This is especially so for those of us lucky never to have experienced the hatred and fear of religious and ethnic persecution on this land or anywhere else.

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

This is a period when I regret not having a greater faith. I lament, because believing in humanity – in our potential for kindness – has let us down so painfully. A different source, a greater power, is required.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have witnessed such extreme examples of human goodness. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The selflessness of bystanders. First responders – police officers and medical staff, those who charged into the gunfire to help fellow humans, some recognised but for the most part unnamed and unheralded.

When the police tape still waved in the wind all about Bondi, the necessity of social, faith-based and cultural solidarity was admirably championed by religious figures. It was a call of love and acceptance – of unifying rather than splitting apart in a moment of antisemitic slaughter.

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 love was the essence of faith.

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

And yet segments of the political landscape responded so disgustingly swiftly with fragmentation, finger-pointing and accusation.

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

Witness the dangerous rhetoric of disunity from veteran agitators of societal discord, exploiting the attack before the site was even cold. Then consider the statements of leadership aspirants while the investigation was still active.

Government has a formidable job to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is mourning and frightened and seeking the hope and, not least, explanations to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was judged as likely, did such a significant public Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a grossly inadequate protection? Like how could the accused attackers have multiple firearms in the family home when the security agency has so publicly and consistently alerted of the danger of antisemitic violence?

How quickly we were subjected to that cliched argument (or versions of it) that it’s people not guns that kill. Of course, each point are valid. It’s feasible to simultaneously pursue new ways to stop hate-fuelled violence and keep firearms away from its potential actors.

In this city of immense splendor, of clear blue heavens above ocean and sand, the water and the beaches – our shared community spaces – may not look quite the same again to the many who’ve observed that famous Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s obscene bloodshed.

We yearn right now for understanding 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 in order.

But this is perhaps counterintuitively against instinct. For in these times of fear, anger, sadness, confusion and loss we need each other more than ever.

The reassurance 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 cohesion in politics and society will be elusive this long, enervating summer.