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As Australia winds down for a customary Christmas holiday across languorous days of coast and scorching heat set to the background of Test cricket and insect sounds, this year the country’s summer atmosphere feels, unfortunately, like none before.

It would be a significant oversimplification to characterize the collective temperament after the antisemitic terrorist attack on Jewish Australians during Bondi Hanukah festivities as one of simple discontent.

Throughout the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of the nation's urban centers – a tone of immediate surprise, sorrow and horror is segueing to anger and bitter polarization.

Those who had not picked up on the frequently expressed fears of Australian Jews are now acutely aware. Similarly, they are attuned to reconciling the need for a much more immediate, vigorous government and institutional fight against anti-Jewish hatred with the right 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 depleted. This is especially so for those of us fortunate enough never to have endured the animosity and fear of faith-based persecution on this land or elsewhere.

And yet the algorithms keep churning out at us the banal instant opinions of those with blistering, polarizing views but little understanding at all of that profound fragility.

This is a period when I lament not having a stronger spiritual belief. I lament, because having faith in people – in mankind’s potential for compassion – has let us down so painfully. A different source, a greater power, is required.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have seen such profound instances of human goodness. The heroism of individuals. The bravery of those present. Emergency personnel – police officers and paramedics, those who charged into the gunfire to aid others, some publicly hailed but for the most part unnamed and unheralded.

When the police tape still fluttered in the wind all about Bondi, the imperative of community, religious and cultural unity was admirably promoted by faith leaders. It was a call of love and acceptance – of bringing together rather than dividing in a time of targeted violence.

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

Unity, light and compassion was the essence of belief.

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

And yet segments of the Australian polity responded so disgustingly swiftly with division, finger-pointing and recrimination.

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

Observe the harmful message of division from longstanding fomenters of societal discord, exploiting the attack before the site was even cold. Then read the statements of leadership aspirants while the probe was ongoing.

Politics has a formidable job to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is mourning and scared and looking for the hope and, importantly, explanations to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was judged as likely, did such a significant public Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a woefully inadequate protection? Like how could the alleged killers have six guns in the family home when the security agency has so openly and repeatedly warned of the threat of targeted attacks?

How rapidly we were treated to that cliched line (or versions of it) that it’s people not weapons that cause death. Naturally, both things are true. It’s possible to simultaneously pursue new ways to prevent violent bigotry and prevent firearms away from its potential perpetrators.

In this metropolis of profound beauty, of pristine blue heavens above ocean and shore, the water and the coastline – our shared community spaces – may not seem entirely familiar again to the many who’ve noted that iconic Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s obscene violence.

We long right now for understanding and significance, for loved ones, and perhaps for the solace of aesthetics in art or nature.

This weekend many Australians are calling off Christmas party plans. Reflective solitude will feel more appropriate.

But this is perhaps counterintuitively against instinct. For in these times of anxiety, anger, melancholy, bewilderment and grief we require each other now more than ever.

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

But sadly, all of the portents are that unity in public life and the community will be hard to find this long, enervating summer.