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As Australia winds down for a customary Christmas holiday across slow-moving days of beach and blistering heat set to the background of Test cricket and insect sounds, this year the country’s summer mood feels, unfortunately, like no other.

It would be a significant oversimplification to describe the collective temperament after the antisemitic terrorist attack on Jewish Australians during the beachside Hanukah celebrations 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 immediate shock, sorrow and horror is shifting to fury and bitter polarization.

Those who had previously missed the frequently expressed fears of Australian Jews are now acutely aware. Just as, they are sensitive to balancing the need for a much more immediate, energetic government and institutional crackdown against antisemitism with the freedom to demonstrate against mass atrocities.

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

And yet the algorithms keep spewing at us the trite instant opinions of those with inflammatory, divisive stances but no sense at all of that terrifying fragility.

This is a time when I lament not having a greater spiritual belief. I mourn, because believing in people – in mankind’s capacity for kindness – has let us down so painfully. Something else, a greater power, 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 selflessness of bystanders. Emergency personnel – police officers and medical staff, those who charged into the gunfire to help fellow humans, some recognised but for the most part unnamed and unsung.

When the barrier cordon still waved in the wind all about Bondi, the imperative of community, religious and cultural unity was admirably promoted by religious figures. It was a message of compassion and acceptance – of bringing together rather than dividing in a moment of targeted violence.

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

Togetherness, hope and compassion was the message of belief.

‘Our shared community spaces may not appear quite the same again.’

And yet elements of the Australian polity reacted so nauseatingly quickly with division, blame and accusation.

Some elected officials gravitated straight for the pessimism, using tragedy as a cynical opportunity to question Australia’s immigration policies.

Witness the dangerous rhetoric of disunity from veteran agitators of societal discord, capitalizing on the attack before the crime scene was even cold. Then consider the statements of political figures while the probe was still active.

Government has a daunting job to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is mourning and scared and looking for the hope and, not least, answers to so many questions.

Like why, when the official terror alert was judged as probable, did such a large public Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a grossly insufficient protection? Like how could the accused attackers have six guns in the residence when the security agency has so openly and repeatedly warned of the threat of targeted attacks?

How rapidly we were subjected to that tired line (or iterations of it) that it’s individuals not guns that kill. Naturally, both things are true. It’s feasible to at the same time pursue new ways to prevent violent bigotry and keep guns away from its possible perpetrators.

In this metropolis of immense beauty, of clear azure skies above ocean and shore, the ocean and the beaches – our shared community spaces – may not seem entirely familiar again to the many who’ve observed that iconic Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s obscene violence.

We long right now for comprehension and meaning, for family, and perhaps for the consolation of beauty in art or nature.

This weekend many Australians are calling off Christmas party plans. Quiet contemplation will seem more in order.

But this is perhaps somewhat against instinct. For in these days of fear, anger, 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 probably need most.

But tragically, all of the indicators are that unity in public life and the community will be elusive this extended, draining summer.