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As the nation 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 nation's summer atmosphere seems, sadly, like no other.

It would be a dramatic understatement to characterize the national temperament after the antisemitic terrorist attack on Jewish Australians during Bondi Hanukah festivities as one of mere discontent.

Throughout the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of Australian cities – a tenor of initial shock, grief and horror is shifting to fury and deep division.

Those who had previously missed the frequently expressed fears of Australian Jews are now highly attuned. Similarly, they are sensitive to balancing the need for a far more urgent, energetic government and institutional crackdown against antisemitism with the freedom to peacefully protest against genocide.

If ever there was a moment for a national listening, it is now, when our faith in mankind is so sorely diminished. This is particularly so for those of us lucky never to have endured the animosity and fear of religious and ethnic targeting on this land or anywhere else.

And yet the algorithms keep churning out at us the banal hot takes of those with blistering, divisive views but no sense at all of that profound fragility.

This is a period when I lament not having a greater faith. I mourn, because believing in humanity – in mankind’s capacity for kindness – has failed us so painfully. A different source, something higher, is required.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have witnessed such extreme examples of human decency. The heroism of individuals. The selflessness of bystanders. First responders – police officers and paramedics, those who ran towards the danger to aid others, some recognised but for the most part anonymous and unheralded.

When the police tape still waved wildly all about Bondi, the necessity of community, faith-based and cultural unity was admirably promoted by faith leaders. It was a call of love and tolerance – of unifying rather than splitting apart in a time of targeted violence.

In keeping with the meaning of the Festival of Lights (light amid darkness), there was so much appropriate reference of the need for hope.

Togetherness, hope and love was the message of belief.

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

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

Some politicians moved straight for the darkness, using the atrocity as a cynical opportunity to question Australia’s immigration policies.

Witness the harmful rhetoric of disunity from veteran fomenters of societal discord, capitalizing on the attack before the site was even cold. Then consider the statements of leadership aspirants while the probe was still active.

Politics has a formidable job to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is grieving and scared and seeking the hope and, not least, explanations to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was judged as likely, did such a significant public Hanukah event go ahead with such a woefully inadequate security presence? Like how could the alleged killers have multiple firearms in the residence when the domestic intelligence organisation has so openly and consistently alerted of the threat of antisemitic violence?

How rapidly we were subjected to that tired line (or versions of it) that it’s individuals not guns that kill. Of course, each point are valid. It’s possible to simultaneously pursue new ways to stop hate-fuelled violence and keep firearms away from its possible perpetrators.

In this city of profound beauty, of pristine blue heavens above ocean and sand, the water and the coastline – our communal areas – may not seem 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 comprehension and significance, for loved ones, and perhaps for the solace of beauty in culture or nature.

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

But this is perhaps counterintuitively counterintuitive. For in these times of anxiety, outrage, melancholy, bewilderment and loss we need each other 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 portents are that unity in public life and society will be elusive this long, enervating summer.