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While Australia winds down for a traditional Christmas holiday across slow-moving days of beach and blistering heat accompanied by the soundtrack of Test cricket and cicada song, this year the country’s summer atmosphere seems, unfortunately, like none before.

It would be a significant understatement to describe the collective temperament after the anti-Jewish terrorist attack on Australian Jews during Bondi Hanukah festivities as one of simple ennui.

Across the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of the nation's urban centers – a tone of initial surprise, sorrow and terror is shifting to fury and bitter polarization.

Those who had not picked up on the often voiced fears of Australian Jews are now highly attuned. Just as, they are sensitive to balancing the need for a much more immediate, energetic official fight against anti-Jewish hatred with the right to peacefully protest against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a time for a national listening, it is now, when our faith in humanity is so deeply diminished. This is especially so for those of us fortunate enough never to have endured the hatred and fear of faith-based persecution on this continent or anywhere else.

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

This is a period when I lament not having a greater faith. I lament, because having faith in humanity – in our capacity for compassion – has let us down so painfully. A different source, something higher, is required.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have witnessed such extreme instances of human goodness. The heroism of individuals. The selflessness of bystanders. First responders – law enforcement and paramedics, those who charged into the gunfire to aid others, some recognised but for the most part anonymous and unheralded.

When the barrier cordon still fluttered in the wind all about Bondi, the necessity of social, faith-based and cultural unity was admirably promoted by religious figures. It was a call of love and acceptance – of unifying rather than splitting apart in a time of targeted violence.

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

Togetherness, light and compassion was the essence of faith.

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

And yet segments of the political landscape reacted so disgustingly swiftly with division, finger-pointing and accusation.

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

Witness the harmful rhetoric of division from longstanding agitators of Australian racial division, exploiting the massacre before the site was even cold. Then read the statements of leadership aspirants while the probe was ongoing.

Government has a daunting task to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is grieving and scared and seeking the hope and, importantly, explanations to so many questions.

Like why, when the official terror alert was judged as probable, did such a large open-air Hanukah event go ahead with such a woefully inadequate security presence? Like how could the alleged killers have six guns in the family home when the security agency has so openly and consistently warned of the threat of targeted attacks?

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

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

We long right now for comprehension and significance, for loved ones, and perhaps for the consolation 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 counterintuitive. For in these days of anxiety, outrage, sadness, confusion and loss we need each other now more than ever.

The reassurance of community – the binding force of the unity in the very word – is what we probably need most.

But sadly, all of the portents are that unity in politics and the community will be elusive this extended, enervating summer.