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As the nation winds down for a customary Christmas holiday during slow-moving days of coast and blistering heat set to the background of Test cricket and cicada song, this year the nation's summer atmosphere feels, sadly, like no other.

It would be a significant understatement to characterize the collective temperament after the antisemitic terrorist attack on Australian Jews during Bondi Hanukah festivities as one of mere discontent.

Across the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of Australian cities – a tenor of immediate shock, sorrow and horror is shifting to fury and bitter division.

Those who had previously missed the frequently expressed concerns of Australian Jews are now highly attuned. Just as, they are sensitive to balancing the need for a far more urgent, energetic official fight against antisemitism with the right 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 depleted. This is especially so for those of us fortunate enough never to have endured the hatred and fear of faith-based targeting on this land or anywhere else.

And yet the algorithms keep spewing at us the trite instant opinions of those with blistering, divisive stances but little understanding at all of that profound vulnerability.

This is a time when I regret not having a greater faith. I mourn, because having faith in humanity – in mankind’s capacity for compassion – has let us down so acutely. Something else, something higher, is required.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have witnessed such extreme examples of human goodness. 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 unsung.

When the barrier cordon still fluttered in the wind all about Bondi, the imperative of community, faith-based and cultural solidarity was laudably championed by religious figures. It was a message of compassion and tolerance – of unifying rather than dividing in a moment of targeted violence.

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

Unity, light and compassion was the essence of faith.

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

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

Some politicians moved straight for the darkness, using the atrocity as a cynical chance to challenge Australia’s immigration policies.

Observe the dangerous message of disunity from longstanding fomenters of Australian racial division, exploiting the massacre before the site was even cold. Then consider the words of leadership aspirants while the investigation was still active.

Government has a formidable task 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 likely, did such a significant open-air Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a grossly inadequate security presence? Like how could the alleged killers have six guns in the family home when the domestic intelligence organisation has so publicly and repeatedly alerted of the threat of targeted attacks?

How quickly we were treated to that tired line (or versions of it) that it’s individuals not weapons that cause death. Naturally, both things are true. It’s feasible to simultaneously pursue new ways to stop hate-fuelled violence and prevent guns away from its possible actors.

In this city of profound splendor, of pristine blue heavens above ocean and sand, the ocean and the coastline – our shared community spaces – may not seem quite the same again to the multitude who’ve observed that iconic Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s obscene violence.

We long right now for understanding and significance, for loved ones, and perhaps for the solace of beauty in culture or nature.

This weekend many Australians are cancelling Christmas party plans. Reflective solitude will seem more in order.

But this is perhaps counterintuitively against instinct. For in these days of anxiety, anger, sadness, confusion and grief we require each other more than ever.

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

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