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While the nation winds down for a customary Christmas holiday during slow-moving days of coast and blistering heat accompanied by the soundtrack of Test cricket and insect sounds, this year the nation's summer atmosphere feels, sadly, like none before.

It would be a significant understatement to describe the collective disposition after the anti-Jewish terrorist attack on Australian Jews during the beachside Hanukah celebrations as one of simple ennui.

Throughout the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of the nation's urban centers – a tone of initial shock, grief and horror is segueing to anger and bitter polarization.

Those who had not picked up on the frequently expressed fears of the Jewish community are now highly attuned. Just as, they are attuned to balancing the need for a much more immediate, energetic government and institutional crackdown against antisemitism with the freedom to demonstrate against genocide.

If ever there was a moment for a national listening, it is now, when our faith in mankind is so deeply diminished. This is especially so for those of us fortunate enough never to have endured the animosity and fear of faith-based targeting on this land or anywhere else.

And yet the social media feeds keep spewing at us the trite hot takes of those with inflammatory, divisive stances but little understanding at all of that terrifying vulnerability.

This is a time when I regret not having a greater faith. I mourn, because believing in humanity – in our capacity for kindness – has let us down so painfully. Something else, a greater power, is needed.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have witnessed such extreme examples of human goodness. The heroism of individuals. The bravery of those present. Emergency personnel – law enforcement and paramedics, those who ran towards the gunfire to aid others, some recognised but for the most part unnamed and unsung.

When the police tape still waved wildly all about Bondi, the necessity of community, faith-based and cultural unity was laudably promoted by religious figures. It was a message of compassion and acceptance – of bringing together rather than dividing in a time of targeted violence.

Consistent with the symbolism of the Festival of Lights (light amid darkness), there was so much appropriate evocation of the need for lightness.

Togetherness, light and love was the essence of faith.

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

And yet elements of the Australian polity reacted so nauseatingly swiftly with division, finger-pointing and accusation.

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

Witness the dangerous rhetoric of disunity from longstanding fomenters of societal discord, capitalizing on the attack before the site was even cold. Then read the statements of political figures while the investigation was ongoing.

Government has a daunting task to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is grieving and frightened and looking for the hope and, importantly, answers to so many questions.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was assessed as likely, did such a large public Hanukah event go ahead with such a woefully insufficient security presence? Like how could the alleged killers have multiple firearms in the residence when the security agency has so openly and repeatedly alerted of the threat of targeted attacks?

How quickly we were subjected to that tired argument (or versions of it) that it’s individuals not guns that kill. Naturally, both things are true. It’s possible to at the same time pursue new ways to prevent violent bigotry and keep firearms away from its possible actors.

In this metropolis of immense beauty, of pristine blue heavens above sea and shore, the water and the coastline – our shared community spaces – may not seem entirely familiar again to the multitude who’ve observed that iconic Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s horrific bloodshed.

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

This weekend many Australians are calling off holiday gathering plans. Quiet contemplation will seem more in order.

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

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

But tragically, all of the portents are that unity in public life and the community will be elusive this extended, enervating summer.