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As Australia winds down for a traditional Christmas holiday during slow-moving days of coast and blistering heat accompanied by the soundtrack of sporting matches and cicada song, this year the country’s summer atmosphere feels, unfortunately, like none before.

It would be a significant oversimplification to characterize the national temperament after the antisemitic terrorist attack on Jewish Australians 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 tone of immediate shock, sorrow and terror is shifting to fury and bitter polarization.

Those who had previously missed the frequently expressed concerns of the Jewish community are now highly attuned. Similarly, they are sensitive to balancing the need for a far more urgent, vigorous official crackdown against anti-Jewish hatred with the freedom to peacefully protest against genocide.

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 fortunate enough never to have experienced the hatred and fear of religious and ethnic persecution on this continent or anywhere else.

And yet the algorithms keep churning out at us the trite instant opinions of those with blistering, divisive views but little understanding at all of that terrifying vulnerability.

This is a period when I regret not having a stronger spiritual belief. I mourn, because having faith in humanity – in our capacity for kindness – has let us down so painfully. Something else, a greater power, is required.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have seen such profound examples of human decency. The heroism of individuals. The selflessness of bystanders. Emergency personnel – law enforcement and medical staff, those who charged into the danger to aid fellow humans, some publicly hailed but for the most part unnamed and unsung.

When the police tape still fluttered in the wind all about Bondi, the imperative of community, faith-based and ethnic solidarity was laudably championed by faith leaders. It was a call of love and acceptance – of unifying rather than dividing in a moment of antisemitic slaughter.

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

Unity, hope and love was the essence of faith.

‘Our shared community spaces may not appear quite the same again.’

And yet segments of the Australian polity responded so disgustingly quickly with fragmentation, finger-pointing and recrimination.

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

Observe the harmful message of disunity from longstanding fomenters of societal discord, exploiting the attack before the site was even cold. Then consider the words of political figures while the investigation was ongoing.

Politics has a daunting task to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is mourning and scared and seeking the light and, not least, answers to so many questions.

Like why, when the official terror alert was assessed as likely, did such a large public Hanukah event go ahead with such a grossly insufficient protection? Like how could the accused attackers have six guns in the family home when the security agency has so openly and repeatedly warned of the threat of targeted attacks?

How quickly we were treated to that cliched argument (or iterations of it) that it’s individuals not weapons that cause death. Naturally, both things are valid. It’s possible to simultaneously pursue new ways to stop hate-fuelled violence and keep guns away from its possible perpetrators.

In this metropolis of profound splendor, of pristine azure skies above ocean and sand, the ocean and the coastline – our communal areas – may not seem quite the same again to the multitude who’ve observed that famous Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s obscene bloodshed.

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

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

But this is perhaps counterintuitively against instinct. For in these times of anxiety, outrage, melancholy, bewilderment and loss we require 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 sadly, all of the portents are that unity in public life and society will be hard to find this long, draining summer.