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As Australia winds down for a customary Christmas holiday during slow-moving days of beach and scorching heat set to the soundtrack of Test cricket and insect sounds, this year the country’s summer atmosphere seems, sadly, like none before.

It would be a significant oversimplification to describe the collective disposition after the antisemitic terrorist attack on Australian Jews during Bondi Hanukah festivities as one of mere ennui.

Throughout the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of the nation's urban centers – a tenor of initial shock, sorrow and terror is segueing to fury and bitter polarization.

Those who had not picked up on the often voiced concerns of Australian Jews are now acutely aware. Similarly, they are attuned to balancing the need for a much more immediate, vigorous government and institutional fight against anti-Jewish hatred with the right to demonstrate against mass atrocities.

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 fear of faith-based persecution on this land or elsewhere.

And yet the social media feeds keep spewing at us the banal instant opinions of those with blistering, divisive views but little understanding at all of that terrifying vulnerability.

This is a period when I lament not having a greater spiritual belief. I lament, because believing in people – in our potential for compassion – has let us down so painfully. Something else, a greater power, is required.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have seen such extreme examples of human goodness. The heroism of individuals. The bravery of those present. First responders – law enforcement and paramedics, those who charged into the danger to help fellow humans, some recognised but for the most part anonymous and unsung.

When the barrier cordon still fluttered in the wind all about Bondi, the imperative of social, faith-based and cultural solidarity was laudably championed by religious figures. It was a message of love and tolerance – of unifying rather than splitting apart in a time of antisemitic slaughter.

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

Unity, light and love was the message of faith.

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

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

Some politicians gravitated straight for the darkness, using the atrocity as a calculating opportunity to challenge Australia’s immigration policies.

Witness the harmful message of division from longstanding fomenters of societal discord, capitalizing on the massacre before the site was even cold. Then consider the statements of leadership aspirants while the investigation was ongoing.

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

Like why, when the official terror alert was judged as likely, did such a large open-air Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a woefully insufficient security presence? Like how could the accused attackers have six guns in the residence when the domestic intelligence organisation has so publicly and repeatedly alerted of the danger of antisemitic violence?

How quickly we were treated to that tired argument (or iterations of it) that it’s individuals not weapons that cause death. Naturally, both things are true. It’s possible to at the same time seek new ways to stop hate-fuelled violence and prevent firearms away from its potential actors.

In this city of immense beauty, of clear azure skies above sea and sand, the water and the coastline – our shared community spaces – may not seem quite the same again to the many who’ve observed that famous Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s horrific bloodshed.

We yearn right now for understanding and meaning, for family, and perhaps for the consolation of beauty in culture or nature.

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

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

The comfort of community – the human glue of the unity in the very word – is what we probably need most.

But tragically, all of the indicators are that cohesion in politics and society will be hard to find this long, enervating summer.