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While the nation winds down for a customary Christmas holiday across languorous days of beach and blistering heat accompanied by the soundtrack of Test cricket and insect sounds, this year the nation's summer atmosphere feels, unfortunately, like no other.

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

Throughout the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of Australian cities – a tenor of immediate surprise, sorrow and horror is shifting to fury and bitter polarization.

Those who had previously missed the frequently expressed concerns of the Jewish community are now highly attuned. Similarly, they are attuned to balancing the need for a much more immediate, energetic official crackdown against antisemitism with the freedom to peacefully protest 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 particularly so for those of us fortunate enough never to have experienced the animosity and fear of religious and ethnic targeting on this land or elsewhere.

And yet the social media feeds keep spewing at us the trite hot takes of those with inflammatory, divisive views but no sense at all of that profound vulnerability.

This is a time when I regret not having a stronger spiritual belief. I mourn, because having faith in humanity – in our potential for kindness – has failed us so acutely. Something else, a greater power, is needed.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have seen such extreme instances of human decency. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The selflessness of bystanders. First responders – law enforcement and paramedics, those who charged into the gunfire to aid fellow humans, some recognised but for the most part anonymous and unheralded.

When the police tape still waved in the wind all about Bondi, the necessity of social, religious and ethnic solidarity was admirably championed by religious figures. It was a call of compassion and tolerance – of bringing together rather than dividing in a moment of antisemitic slaughter.

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

Togetherness, hope and love was the essence of belief.

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

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

Some elected officials gravitated straight for the pessimism, using tragedy as a calculating chance to question Australia’s immigration policies.

Witness the dangerous rhetoric of division from longstanding fomenters of societal discord, capitalizing on the attack before the site was even cold. Then read 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 light and, importantly, answers to so many questions.

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

How rapidly we were treated to that tired line (or versions of it) that it’s people not weapons that cause death. Of course, both things are valid. It’s feasible to simultaneously pursue new ways to prevent hate-fuelled violence and prevent firearms away from its possible perpetrators.

In this city of profound beauty, of pristine blue heavens above sea and sand, the water and the beaches – our communal areas – may not seem quite the same again to the many who’ve noted that famous Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s obscene violence.

We yearn right now for comprehension and meaning, for loved ones, and perhaps for the consolation of beauty in art or the natural world.

This weekend many Australians are calling off Christmas party plans. Reflective solitude will feel more appropriate.

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

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

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