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While the nation winds down for a customary Christmas holiday during languorous days of beach and blistering heat set to the soundtrack of Test cricket and cicada song, this year the nation's summer mood feels, sadly, like no other.

It would be a significant understatement to describe the collective disposition after the antisemitic terrorist attack on Australian Jews during Bondi Hanukah festivities as one of simple ennui.

Across the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of Australian cities – a tenor of initial surprise, grief and terror is shifting to fury and bitter polarization.

Those who had previously missed the often voiced fears of Australian Jews are now highly attuned. Similarly, they are sensitive to balancing the need for a far more urgent, vigorous official crackdown against anti-Jewish hatred 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 mankind is so deeply diminished. This is especially so for those of us fortunate enough never to have experienced the hatred and fear of religious and ethnic targeting on this land or anywhere else.

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 terrifying vulnerability.

This is a time when I lament not having a greater faith. I mourn, because believing in people – in our capacity for kindness – has failed us so painfully. Something else, something higher, is required.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have seen such extreme examples of human decency. The heroism of individuals. The selflessness of bystanders. First responders – police officers and medical staff, those who ran towards the gunfire to help fellow humans, some publicly hailed but for the most part anonymous and unheralded.

When the police tape still fluttered in the wind all about Bondi, the imperative of social, religious and ethnic unity was laudably championed by faith leaders. It was a call of love and tolerance – of unifying rather than splitting apart in a time of targeted violence.

Consistent with the meaning of the Festival of Lights (illumination amid gloom), there was so much appropriate evocation of the need for lightness.

Unity, light and love was the essence of belief.

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

And yet segments of the Australian polity reacted so disgustingly swiftly with fragmentation, blame and accusation.

Some elected officials moved straight for the pessimism, using the atrocity as a calculating opportunity to challenge Australia’s immigration policies.

Witness the harmful rhetoric of disunity from longstanding agitators of Australian racial division, exploiting the attack before the site was even cold. Then read the statements of political figures while the investigation was ongoing.

Politics has a daunting task to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is grieving and scared and seeking the hope and, not least, explanations to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the official terror alert was judged as likely, did such a large 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 domestic intelligence organisation has so publicly and repeatedly alerted of the danger of antisemitic violence?

How rapidly we were subjected to that cliched line (or iterations of it) that it’s individuals not weapons that cause death. Naturally, both things are valid. It’s possible to simultaneously pursue new ways to prevent hate-fuelled violence and prevent guns away from its possible perpetrators.

In this metropolis of immense splendor, of pristine azure skies above sea and shore, the water and the coastline – our shared community spaces – may not look entirely familiar again to the multitude who’ve observed that iconic Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s horrific violence.

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

This weekend many Australians are calling off holiday gathering plans. Reflective solitude will feel more in order.

But this is perhaps counterintuitively counterintuitive. For in these days of fear, outrage, sadness, confusion and loss we require each other now more than ever.

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

But sadly, all of the indicators are that cohesion in public life and the community will be elusive this long, draining summer.