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While Australia winds down for a customary Christmas holiday during languorous days of coast and scorching heat set to the soundtrack of sporting matches and cicada song, this year the country’s summer mood feels, sadly, like no other.

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

Throughout the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of the nation's urban centers – a tenor of immediate surprise, grief and terror is segueing to fury and bitter division.

Those who had previously missed the frequently expressed fears of Australian Jews are now acutely aware. Similarly, they are attuned to reconciling the need for a much more immediate, vigorous government and institutional fight against antisemitism with the right to demonstrate 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 especially so for those of us lucky never to have endured the animosity and fear of faith-based persecution on this land or elsewhere.

And yet the algorithms keep churning out at us the banal hot takes of those with inflammatory, divisive stances but no sense at all of that terrifying vulnerability.

This is a period when I regret not having a greater faith. I lament, because having faith in people – in mankind’s potential for kindness – has let us down so acutely. A different source, a greater power, is needed.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have witnessed such profound examples of human goodness. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The bravery of those present. Emergency personnel – police officers and paramedics, those who ran towards the gunfire to aid others, some recognised but for the most part unnamed and unsung.

When the barrier cordon still waved wildly all about Bondi, the imperative of community, religious and ethnic solidarity was admirably promoted by faith leaders. It was a message of love and acceptance – of unifying rather than dividing in a moment of targeted violence.

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

Togetherness, light and compassion was the message of belief.

‘Our shared community spaces may not look exactly as they did again.’

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

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

Observe the dangerous rhetoric of division from veteran fomenters of societal discord, capitalizing on the attack before the site was even cold. Then read the words of leadership aspirants while the investigation was ongoing.

Politics has a formidable task to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is mourning and frightened and seeking the hope and, importantly, explanations to so many uncertainties.

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 family home when the domestic intelligence organisation has so publicly and repeatedly warned of the threat of targeted attacks?

How rapidly we were subjected to that cliched argument (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 violent bigotry and keep firearms away from its possible perpetrators.

In this city of profound beauty, of pristine blue heavens above sea and sand, the ocean and the coastline – our communal areas – may not look quite the same again to the multitude who’ve observed that iconic Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s obscene bloodshed.

We long right now for understanding and meaning, for loved ones, and perhaps for the solace of beauty in culture or nature.

This weekend many Australians are cancelling holiday gathering plans. Reflective solitude will feel more appropriate.

But this is perhaps somewhat against instinct. For in these times of fear, outrage, melancholy, bewilderment and loss we require each other now more than ever.

The reassurance 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.