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While Australia winds down for a customary Christmas holiday across slow-moving days of beach and blistering heat accompanied by the soundtrack of sporting matches and cicada song, this year the country’s summer mood seems, sadly, like none before.

It would be a dramatic understatement to describe the collective temperament after the anti-Jewish terrorist attack on Jewish Australians during Bondi Hanukah festivities as one of mere ennui.

Across the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of the nation's urban centers – a tone of immediate surprise, grief and horror is segueing to anger and deep division.

Those who had previously missed the often voiced concerns of Australian Jews are now highly attuned. Just as, they are attuned to balancing the need for a much more immediate, vigorous official crackdown against antisemitism with the freedom to peacefully protest against genocide.

If ever there was a time for a national listening, it is now, when our faith in humanity is so sorely diminished. This is particularly so for those of us fortunate enough never to have experienced the hatred and dread 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 stances but little understanding at all of that terrifying vulnerability.

This is a time when I regret not having a stronger spiritual belief. I lament, because believing in humanity – in mankind’s capacity for compassion – has failed us so painfully. Something else, something higher, is needed.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have witnessed such profound instances of human decency. The heroism of individuals. The selflessness of bystanders. First responders – law enforcement and medical staff, those who charged into the danger to help others, some publicly hailed but for the most part unnamed and unsung.

When the barrier cordon still fluttered in the wind all about Bondi, the imperative of social, faith-based and ethnic unity was admirably promoted by religious figures. It was a message of love and tolerance – of bringing together rather than splitting apart in a time of targeted violence.

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

Togetherness, hope and love was the message of faith.

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

And yet elements of the political landscape responded so disgustingly swiftly with fragmentation, blame and accusation.

Some elected officials gravitated straight for the pessimism, using tragedy as a calculating opportunity to question Australia’s migration rules.

Observe the harmful rhetoric of division from veteran fomenters of societal discord, capitalizing on the massacre before the crime scene was even cold. Then consider the words of political figures while the probe was ongoing.

Politics has a formidable task to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is mourning and scared and looking for the hope and, not least, answers 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 woefully insufficient protection? Like how could the alleged killers have six guns in the residence when the domestic intelligence organisation has so publicly and consistently alerted of the danger of targeted attacks?

How quickly we were subjected to that tired line (or iterations of it) that it’s people not weapons that kill. Naturally, both things are valid. It’s feasible to simultaneously seek new ways to prevent hate-fuelled violence and keep firearms away from its potential perpetrators.

In this city of immense splendor, of clear blue heavens above ocean and shore, the water and the beaches – our communal areas – may not seem entirely familiar again to the multitude who’ve observed that famous Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s obscene violence.

We long right now for understanding and significance, for family, and perhaps for the consolation of aesthetics in art or the natural world.

This weekend many Australians are calling off holiday gathering plans. Reflective solitude will feel more in order.

But this is perhaps somewhat against instinct. For in these times of anxiety, outrage, melancholy, bewilderment 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 unity in public life and society will be elusive this long, enervating summer.