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As Australia settles into for a customary Christmas holiday across languorous days of coast and scorching heat accompanied by the background of sporting matches and insect sounds, this year the country’s summer mood seems, sadly, like no other.

It would be a significant oversimplification to characterize the national temperament after the anti-Jewish violent assault on Jewish Australians during the beachside Hanukah festivities as one of mere ennui.

Throughout the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of the nation's urban centers – a tenor of immediate surprise, sorrow and terror is shifting to fury and bitter division.

Those who had not picked up on the often voiced fears of Australian Jews are now acutely aware. Similarly, they are attuned to balancing the need for a much more immediate, vigorous official crackdown 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 faith in humanity is so deeply depleted. This is particularly so for those of us fortunate enough never to have endured the hatred and dread of religious and ethnic persecution on this continent or anywhere else.

And yet the algorithms keep spewing at us the banal instant opinions of those with blistering, divisive stances but little understanding at all of that profound vulnerability.

This is a time when I lament not having a stronger spiritual belief. I lament, because having faith in people – in our capacity for kindness – has failed us so painfully. Something else, a greater power, is required.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have seen such extreme instances of human goodness. The heroism of individuals. The bravery of those present. First responders – police officers and paramedics, those who ran towards the gunfire to aid fellow humans, some recognised but for the most part anonymous and unheralded.

When the barrier cordon still waved in the wind all about Bondi, the necessity of social, religious and ethnic solidarity was admirably championed by religious figures. It was a message of love and tolerance – of unifying rather than splitting apart in a moment of targeted violence.

Consistent with the meaning of the Festival of Lights (light amid darkness), there was so much fitting evocation of the need for lightness.

Unity, hope and compassion was the message of belief.

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

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

Some politicians moved straight for the darkness, using tragedy as a cynical opportunity to question Australia’s migration rules.

Observe the dangerous rhetoric of disunity from veteran agitators of societal discord, capitalizing on the attack before the crime scene was even cold. Then read the words of political figures while the probe was ongoing.

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

Like why, when the official terror alert was assessed as probable, did such a significant open-air Hanukah event go ahead with such a grossly inadequate security presence? Like how could the alleged killers have six guns in the residence when the security agency has so publicly and consistently alerted of the threat of targeted attacks?

How rapidly we were subjected to that cliched argument (or versions of it) that it’s individuals not weapons that kill. Naturally, both things are true. It’s possible to at the same time pursue new ways to stop violent bigotry and prevent firearms away from its potential perpetrators.

In this city of immense beauty, of clear blue heavens above sea and shore, the water and the coastline – our communal areas – may not look quite the same again to the many who’ve noted that iconic Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s horrific violence.

We long right now for comprehension and meaning, for family, and perhaps for the consolation of aesthetics in art or nature.

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

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

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

But tragically, all of the indicators are that unity in public life and the community will be elusive this long, enervating summer.