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As Australia settles into for a traditional Christmas holiday during slow-moving days of coast and blistering heat set to the soundtrack of sporting matches and cicada song, this year the nation's summer mood feels, sadly, like no other.

It would be a dramatic understatement to describe the collective temperament after the antisemitic terrorist attack on Jewish Australians during the beachside Hanukah celebrations as one of mere discontent.

Throughout the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of Australian cities – a tone of immediate surprise, grief and horror is segueing to fury and deep 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 far more urgent, vigorous official crackdown against antisemitism 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 mankind is so sorely diminished. This is especially so for those of us lucky never to have endured the hatred and fear of religious and ethnic targeting on this continent or elsewhere.

And yet the algorithms keep spewing at us the trite hot takes of those with blistering, polarizing stances but no sense at all of that terrifying vulnerability.

This is a period when I regret not having a stronger faith. I lament, because having faith in humanity – in our capacity for compassion – has failed us so acutely. A different source, a greater power, is required.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have witnessed such extreme examples of human decency. The heroism of individuals. The bravery of those present. Emergency personnel – police officers and medical staff, those who ran towards the gunfire to aid others, some publicly hailed but for the most part unnamed and unsung.

When the barrier cordon still fluttered in the wind all about Bondi, the necessity of community, religious and cultural solidarity was admirably promoted by faith leaders. It was a call of love and tolerance – of bringing together rather than dividing in a moment of antisemitic slaughter.

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

Togetherness, hope and compassion was the essence of faith.

‘Our public places may not look exactly as they did again.’

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

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

Witness the harmful message of division from longstanding agitators of Australian racial division, capitalizing on the attack before the crime scene was even cold. Then consider the statements of leadership aspirants while the investigation was still active.

Politics has a formidable job to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is mourning and scared and looking for the light and, not least, explanations to so many questions.

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 accused attackers have six guns in the residence when the domestic intelligence organisation has so publicly and repeatedly alerted 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, each point are valid. It’s possible to simultaneously seek new ways to stop hate-fuelled violence and prevent firearms away from its possible perpetrators.

In this city of immense splendor, of clear blue heavens above sea and shore, the water and the coastline – our communal areas – may not look entirely familiar again to the many who’ve observed that iconic Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s obscene bloodshed.

We yearn right now for understanding and significance, for family, and perhaps for the consolation of beauty in art or nature.

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

But this is perhaps counterintuitively against instinct. For in these days of fear, anger, sadness, bewilderment and loss we need each other now more than ever.

The reassurance 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 politics and society will be hard to find this extended, draining summer.