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As the nation settles into for a customary Christmas holiday across slow-moving days of coast and blistering heat accompanied by the background of Test cricket and insect sounds, this year the country’s summer mood seems, unfortunately, like no other.

It would be a significant oversimplification to characterize the collective temperament after the anti-Jewish terrorist attack on Jewish Australians during Bondi Hanukah celebrations as one of simple 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 shifting to anger and deep polarization.

Those who had previously missed the frequently expressed concerns of the Jewish community are now highly attuned. Just as, they are sensitive to reconciling the need for a far more urgent, vigorous government and institutional fight against antisemitism with the freedom to peacefully protest against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a time for a national listening, it is now, when our belief in humanity is so sorely depleted. This is especially so for those of us lucky never to have experienced the animosity and dread of religious and ethnic targeting on this land or elsewhere.

And yet the social media feeds keep churning out at us the banal hot takes of those with inflammatory, polarizing stances but little understanding at all of that terrifying fragility.

This is a period when I regret not having a greater faith. I lament, because having faith in humanity – in mankind’s potential for kindness – has let us down so painfully. Something else, something higher, is required.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have witnessed such profound examples of human goodness. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The selflessness of bystanders. Emergency personnel – law enforcement and paramedics, those who ran towards the gunfire to help fellow humans, some publicly hailed but for the most part anonymous and unsung.

When the barrier cordon still fluttered in the wind all about Bondi, the necessity of social, religious and ethnic unity was laudably championed by faith leaders. It was a call of compassion and acceptance – of unifying rather than splitting apart in a time of antisemitic slaughter.

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

Togetherness, hope and compassion was the essence of faith.

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

And yet segments of the political landscape responded so nauseatingly swiftly with fragmentation, finger-pointing and recrimination.

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

Witness the dangerous rhetoric of disunity from veteran agitators of societal discord, exploiting the attack before the crime scene was even cold. Then consider the words of leadership aspirants while the probe was still active.

Government has a formidable job to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is mourning and scared and looking for the hope and, importantly, answers to so many questions.

Like why, when the official terror alert was assessed as likely, did such a large open-air Hanukah event go ahead with such a woefully inadequate security presence? Like how could the alleged killers have multiple firearms in the family home when the security agency has so publicly and consistently alerted of the danger of targeted attacks?

How quickly we were treated to that cliched line (or iterations of it) that it’s people not weapons that cause death. Of course, both things are valid. It’s feasible to at the same time seek new ways to prevent violent bigotry and prevent firearms away from its potential perpetrators.

In this city of immense splendor, of clear blue heavens above ocean and sand, the water and the beaches – our communal areas – may not look 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 comprehension and meaning, for family, and perhaps for the consolation of beauty in culture or the natural world.

This weekend many Australians are calling off Christmas party plans. Quiet contemplation will feel more appropriate.

But this is perhaps somewhat against instinct. For in these times of fear, outrage, sadness, confusion and grief we need each other now more than ever.

The comfort 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 cohesion in politics and the community will be hard to find this long, draining summer.