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While the nation settles into for a customary Christmas holiday across languorous days of beach and blistering heat set to the soundtrack of sporting matches and cicada song, this year the nation's summer atmosphere seems, unfortunately, like no other.

It would be a dramatic understatement to describe the national temperament after the antisemitic terrorist attack on Jewish Australians during Bondi Hanukah celebrations as one of simple discontent.

Across the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of Australian cities – a tone of immediate shock, grief and terror is shifting to anger and bitter division.

Those who had previously missed the frequently expressed fears of the Jewish community are now highly attuned. Just as, they are sensitive to reconciling the need for a much more immediate, vigorous government and institutional crackdown against anti-Jewish hatred with the right to demonstrate against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a moment for a national listening, it is now, when our faith in humanity is so sorely depleted. This is especially so for those of us fortunate enough never to have endured the animosity and dread of religious and ethnic targeting on this continent or anywhere else.

And yet the algorithms keep churning out at us the trite instant opinions of those with blistering, polarizing stances but no sense at all of that terrifying fragility.

This is a time when I lament not having a greater faith. I lament, because having faith in humanity – in mankind’s capacity for kindness – has let us down so acutely. A different source, something higher, is needed.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have witnessed such profound instances of human goodness. The heroism of individuals. The selflessness of bystanders. Emergency personnel – law enforcement and paramedics, those who ran towards the gunfire to help others, some publicly hailed 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 ethnic unity was laudably promoted by faith leaders. It was a call of love and tolerance – of unifying rather than dividing in a moment of antisemitic slaughter.

Consistent with the meaning of Hanukah (light amid darkness), there was so much appropriate evocation of the need for hope.

Unity, light and compassion was the essence of faith.

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

And yet elements of the Australian polity responded so nauseatingly quickly with fragmentation, blame and accusation.

Some politicians moved straight for the pessimism, using tragedy as a calculating chance to challenge Australia’s immigration policies.

Observe the harmful rhetoric of division from longstanding fomenters of societal discord, capitalizing on the massacre before the crime scene was even cold. Then read the words of leadership aspirants while the probe was ongoing.

Politics has a formidable job to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is grieving and frightened and seeking the light and, not least, explanations to so many questions.

Like why, when the official terror alert was judged as likely, did such a significant open-air Hanukah event go ahead with such a woefully inadequate protection? Like how could the alleged killers have multiple firearms in the residence when the domestic intelligence organisation has so publicly and repeatedly warned of the danger of targeted attacks?

How quickly we were treated to that tired line (or versions of it) that it’s individuals not guns that cause death. Of course, each point are true. It’s feasible to simultaneously seek new ways to stop violent bigotry and prevent guns away from its potential actors.

In this city of profound beauty, of pristine blue heavens above sea and shore, the ocean and the beaches – our shared community spaces – may not seem quite the same again to the multitude who’ve noted that famous Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s horrific violence.

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

This weekend many Australians are calling off holiday gathering plans. Quiet contemplation will feel more appropriate.

But this is perhaps counterintuitively against instinct. For in these times of anxiety, outrage, sadness, bewilderment and grief we need each other more than ever.

The reassurance 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 politics and the community will be elusive this extended, draining summer.