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While Australia winds down for a traditional Christmas holiday across languorous days of beach and blistering heat accompanied by the soundtrack of sporting matches and insect sounds, this year the nation's summer mood seems, sadly, like none before.

It would be a significant oversimplification to describe the collective disposition after the antisemitic terrorist attack on Jewish Australians during Bondi Hanukah festivities as one of mere ennui.

Across the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of the nation's urban centers – a tenor of immediate surprise, grief and terror is shifting to anger and deep polarization.

Those who had previously missed the often voiced fears of the Jewish community are now highly attuned. Similarly, they are attuned to balancing the need for a far more urgent, energetic government and institutional fight against antisemitism with the right to demonstrate against genocide.

If ever there was a time for a national listening, it is now, when our belief in mankind is so sorely diminished. This is especially so for those of us lucky never to have experienced the hatred and fear of faith-based persecution on this land or anywhere else.

And yet the social media feeds keep spewing at us the trite instant opinions of those with blistering, polarizing views but little understanding at all of that terrifying vulnerability.

This is a time when I regret not having a stronger spiritual belief. I mourn, because believing in people – in mankind’s capacity for compassion – has let us down so acutely. Something else, something higher, is required.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have witnessed such profound instances of human decency. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The bravery of those present. Emergency personnel – law enforcement and paramedics, those who ran towards the gunfire to help fellow humans, some recognised but for the most part anonymous and unsung.

When the police tape still fluttered wildly all about Bondi, the necessity of social, religious and cultural unity was laudably promoted by faith leaders. It was a message of compassion and tolerance – of bringing together rather than dividing in a time of antisemitic slaughter.

Consistent with the symbolism of the Festival of Lights (light amid gloom), 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 elements of the political landscape responded so disgustingly swiftly with fragmentation, finger-pointing and recrimination.

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

Observe the harmful message of disunity from longstanding agitators of societal discord, exploiting the massacre 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 grieving and frightened and looking for the hope and, not least, answers to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the official terror alert was judged as probable, did such a large open-air Hanukah event go ahead with such a grossly insufficient protection? Like how could the alleged killers have six guns in the residence when the security agency has so publicly and consistently warned of the danger of antisemitic violence?

How quickly we were subjected to that tired argument (or versions of it) that it’s people not guns that cause death. Of course, both things are valid. It’s feasible to simultaneously pursue new ways to stop violent bigotry and keep guns away from its possible actors.

In this city of profound beauty, of clear blue heavens above sea and sand, the water and the beaches – our shared community spaces – may not look quite the same again to the many who’ve noted that famous Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s horrific bloodshed.

We long right now for comprehension and meaning, for loved ones, and perhaps for the solace of beauty in art or the natural world.

This weekend many Australians are cancelling holiday gathering plans. Quiet contemplation will feel more in order.

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

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

But tragically, all of the portents are that cohesion in public life and the community will be hard to find this extended, enervating summer.