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While Australia winds down for a traditional Christmas holiday across languorous days of coast and blistering heat set to the background of sporting matches and cicada song, this year the country’s summer atmosphere seems, sadly, like no other.

It would be a significant oversimplification to describe the national temperament after the antisemitic terrorist attack on Australian Jews during the beachside Hanukah festivities as one of simple ennui.

Across the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of the nation's urban centers – a tenor of initial surprise, grief and horror is segueing to fury and bitter division.

Those who had not picked up on the often voiced fears of the Jewish community are now highly attuned. Just as, they are attuned to reconciling 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 particularly so for those of us fortunate enough never to have endured the hatred and dread of faith-based persecution on this land or elsewhere.

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

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

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have witnessed such extreme instances of human decency. The heroism of individuals. The bravery of those present. First responders – law enforcement and paramedics, those who charged into the danger to help fellow humans, some recognised but for the most part unnamed and unsung.

When the police tape still waved wildly all about Bondi, the imperative of social, faith-based and cultural solidarity was laudably promoted by faith leaders. It was a call of love and tolerance – of bringing together rather than dividing in a moment of targeted violence.

In keeping with the symbolism of Hanukah (illumination amid darkness), there was so much appropriate reference of the need for hope.

Unity, light and love was the message of faith.

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

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

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

Observe the dangerous rhetoric of division from veteran agitators of societal discord, capitalizing on the attack before the site was even cold. Then consider the statements of political figures while the investigation was ongoing.

Politics has a formidable task to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is grieving and scared and seeking the light and, importantly, answers to so many questions.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was assessed as likely, did such a large public Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a grossly inadequate protection? Like how could the alleged killers have multiple firearms in the residence when the domestic intelligence organisation has so publicly and consistently warned of the threat of antisemitic violence?

How rapidly we were subjected to that tired argument (or iterations of it) that it’s individuals not guns that cause death. Naturally, both things are true. It’s possible to simultaneously pursue new ways to prevent violent bigotry and prevent guns away from its possible perpetrators.

In this metropolis of immense beauty, of pristine azure skies above ocean and sand, the ocean and the coastline – our communal areas – may not seem entirely familiar again to the multitude who’ve observed that iconic Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s horrific bloodshed.

We yearn right now for understanding and meaning, for family, and perhaps for the consolation of beauty in art or the natural world.

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

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

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

But tragically, all of the portents are that unity in politics and society will be elusive this long, enervating summer.