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While Australia winds down for a traditional Christmas holiday across languorous days of beach and scorching heat accompanied by the background of sporting matches and cicada song, this year the country’s summer atmosphere seems, sadly, like none before.

It would be a dramatic oversimplification to describe the collective temperament after the anti-Jewish terrorist attack on Jewish Australians during the beachside Hanukah celebrations as one of mere discontent.

Throughout the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of the nation's urban centers – a tenor of initial surprise, grief and horror is segueing to fury and deep polarization.

Those who had previously missed the often voiced fears of the Jewish community are now highly attuned. Similarly, they are sensitive to reconciling the need for a much more immediate, vigorous official fight against antisemitism with the freedom to peacefully protest against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a time for a national listening, it is now, when our belief in mankind is so deeply depleted. This is particularly so for those of us lucky never to have endured the animosity and dread of faith-based persecution on this continent or elsewhere.

And yet the social media feeds keep churning out at us the trite instant opinions of those with blistering, divisive views but no sense at all of that terrifying fragility.

This is a period when I regret not having a stronger faith. I mourn, because believing in people – in our capacity for kindness – has failed us so painfully. Something else, a greater power, is needed.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have seen such extreme instances of human decency. The heroism of individuals. The bravery of those present. Emergency personnel – law enforcement and medical staff, those who ran towards the danger to aid others, some recognised but for the most part anonymous and unsung.

When the police tape still fluttered in the wind all about Bondi, the necessity of community, religious and cultural solidarity was admirably promoted by religious figures. It was a message of compassion and acceptance – of unifying rather than splitting apart in a time of targeted violence.

In keeping with the symbolism of Hanukah (light amid gloom), there was so much appropriate reference of the need for hope.

Togetherness, hope and compassion was the essence of belief.

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

And yet segments of the Australian polity responded so disgustingly swiftly with fragmentation, blame and recrimination.

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

Witness the harmful message of division from veteran agitators of Australian racial division, capitalizing on the attack before the crime scene was even cold. Then read the words of leadership aspirants while the probe was still active.

Government has a daunting job to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is mourning and frightened and looking for the light and, not least, answers to so many questions.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was judged as likely, did such a large open-air Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a woefully inadequate protection? Like how could the alleged killers have multiple firearms in the residence when the security agency has so publicly and consistently warned of the danger of antisemitic violence?

How rapidly we were subjected to that cliched argument (or iterations of it) that it’s individuals not guns that kill. Of course, both things are true. It’s feasible to at the same time pursue new ways to stop hate-fuelled violence and prevent firearms away from its potential actors.

In this city of immense beauty, of pristine azure skies above ocean and shore, the water and the coastline – our shared community spaces – may not look entirely familiar again to the multitude who’ve noted that famous Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s obscene bloodshed.

We yearn right now for understanding and meaning, for loved ones, and perhaps for the solace of aesthetics in art or the natural world.

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

But this is perhaps somewhat counterintuitive. For in these times of anxiety, outrage, melancholy, confusion 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 likely need most.

But tragically, all of the indicators are that unity in public life and society will be elusive this long, draining summer.