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While Australia settles into for a traditional Christmas holiday across slow-moving days of coast and blistering heat accompanied by the soundtrack of Test cricket and cicada song, this year the nation's summer mood seems, sadly, like no other.

It would be a significant oversimplification to describe the national temperament after the antisemitic terrorist attack on Australian Jews during Bondi Hanukah festivities as one of mere ennui.

Throughout the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of Australian cities – a tone of immediate surprise, grief and terror is segueing to anger and bitter polarization.

Those who had not picked up on the frequently expressed fears of the Jewish community are now acutely aware. Just as, they are sensitive to reconciling the need for a far more urgent, energetic official crackdown against antisemitism with the right to peacefully protest against genocide.

If ever there was a time for a national listening, it is now, when our faith in mankind is so deeply diminished. This is particularly so for those of us fortunate enough never to have endured the animosity and fear of religious and ethnic persecution on this continent or elsewhere.

And yet the social media feeds keep spewing at us the trite instant opinions of those with inflammatory, polarizing stances but no sense at all of that profound fragility.

This is a period when I lament not having a stronger spiritual belief. I mourn, because having faith in humanity – in mankind’s potential for kindness – has failed us so painfully. A different source, a greater power, is required.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have seen such extreme examples of human goodness. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The bravery of those present. Emergency personnel – police officers and paramedics, those who ran towards the gunfire to help others, some publicly hailed but for the most part anonymous and unsung.

When the police tape still waved wildly all about Bondi, the necessity of social, faith-based and ethnic unity was admirably championed by faith leaders. It was a call of compassion and acceptance – of unifying rather than dividing in a moment of antisemitic slaughter.

In keeping with the symbolism of the Festival of Lights (illumination amid gloom), there was so much fitting reference of the need for hope.

Togetherness, hope and love was the message of faith.

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

And yet segments of the Australian polity reacted so disgustingly swiftly with fragmentation, finger-pointing and accusation.

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

Observe the harmful rhetoric of disunity from veteran fomenters of Australian racial division, exploiting the massacre before the crime scene was even cold. Then read the words of political figures while the probe was ongoing.

Government has a formidable task to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is mourning and scared and seeking the hope and, importantly, explanations to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the official terror alert was judged as probable, did such a significant public Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a woefully insufficient security presence? Like how could the accused attackers have six guns in the residence when the domestic intelligence organisation has so publicly and repeatedly alerted of the danger of targeted attacks?

How quickly we were subjected to that tired line (or versions of it) that it’s people not guns that kill. Of course, both things are true. It’s possible to simultaneously seek new ways to stop violent bigotry and prevent guns away from its potential perpetrators.

In this metropolis of immense beauty, of pristine azure skies above ocean and sand, the ocean and the beaches – our communal areas – may not seem quite the same again to the many who’ve noted that iconic Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s obscene violence.

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

This weekend many Australians are cancelling holiday gathering plans. Quiet contemplation will feel more in order.

But this is perhaps counterintuitively against instinct. For in these times of anxiety, outrage, sadness, bewilderment and loss we need 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 tragically, all of the indicators are that unity in public life and the community will be elusive this extended, enervating summer.