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While the nation settles into for a traditional Christmas holiday across languorous days of coast and scorching heat set to the soundtrack of Test cricket and cicada song, this year the nation's summer mood feels, sadly, like none before.

It would be a significant understatement to characterize the collective temperament after the anti-Jewish terrorist attack on Jewish Australians during the beachside Hanukah festivities as one of simple discontent.

Across the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of Australian cities – a tone of immediate shock, sorrow and horror is segueing to fury and deep division.

Those who had previously missed the often voiced concerns of Australian Jews are now highly attuned. Just as, they are sensitive to reconciling the need for a far more urgent, vigorous government and institutional fight against antisemitism with the freedom to peacefully protest against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a time for a national listening, it is now, when our faith in humanity is so sorely depleted. This is especially so for those of us lucky never to have experienced the hatred and fear of religious and ethnic persecution on this land or elsewhere.

And yet the algorithms keep spewing at us the trite instant opinions of those with blistering, divisive stances but little understanding at all of that terrifying vulnerability.

This is a period when I regret not having a stronger faith. I mourn, because believing in humanity – in mankind’s capacity for compassion – has failed us so painfully. Something else, something higher, is needed.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have witnessed such extreme instances of human decency. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The selflessness of bystanders. First responders – police officers and medical staff, those who charged into the danger to aid others, some publicly hailed but for the most part unnamed and unheralded.

When the police tape still fluttered wildly all about Bondi, the imperative of community, faith-based and cultural unity was admirably promoted by faith leaders. It was a message of compassion and acceptance – of unifying rather than splitting apart in a time of targeted violence.

In keeping with the symbolism of the Festival of Lights (illumination amid darkness), there was so much fitting evocation of the need for lightness.

Unity, light and compassion was the essence of belief.

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

And yet segments of the political landscape reacted so nauseatingly swiftly with division, finger-pointing and accusation.

Some politicians gravitated straight for the darkness, using tragedy as a calculating chance to challenge Australia’s migration rules.

Observe the harmful rhetoric of division from longstanding agitators of Australian racial division, exploiting the massacre before the site was even cold. Then consider the words of leadership aspirants while the probe was ongoing.

Government has a formidable task to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is mourning and scared and looking for the hope and, not least, explanations to so many questions.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was assessed as likely, did such a significant public Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a woefully insufficient protection? Like how could the alleged killers have six guns in the residence when the security agency has so openly and consistently warned of the threat of antisemitic violence?

How rapidly we were subjected to that tired line (or versions of it) that it’s people not guns that cause death. Naturally, both things are true. It’s feasible to simultaneously pursue new ways to prevent hate-fuelled violence and keep guns away from its potential actors.

In this city of profound beauty, of clear blue heavens above sea and shore, the ocean and the beaches – our communal areas – may not seem quite the same again to the multitude who’ve noted that iconic Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s obscene bloodshed.

We long right now for understanding and meaning, for family, and perhaps for the solace of aesthetics in culture or the natural world.

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

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

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

But sadly, all of the indicators are that cohesion in politics and society will be hard to find this extended, enervating summer.