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As the nation winds down for a traditional Christmas holiday during languorous days of beach and blistering heat accompanied by the soundtrack of sporting matches and insect sounds, this year the country’s summer atmosphere feels, sadly, like no other.

It would be a dramatic oversimplification to characterize the national disposition after the antisemitic violent assault on Jewish Australians during Bondi Hanukah celebrations as one of mere discontent.

Throughout the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of the nation's urban centers – a tenor of immediate surprise, grief and terror is shifting to anger and deep division.

Those who had not picked up on the frequently expressed concerns of Australian Jews are now highly attuned. Just as, they are attuned to balancing the need for a far more urgent, energetic government and institutional fight against antisemitism with the right to peacefully protest against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a moment for a national listening, it is now, when our belief in humanity is so deeply diminished. This is particularly so for those of us lucky never to have experienced the animosity and fear of religious and ethnic persecution on this continent or elsewhere.

And yet the algorithms keep spewing at us the trite hot takes of those with blistering, divisive stances but little understanding at all of that profound fragility.

This is a period when I lament not having a greater spiritual belief. I mourn, because having faith in humanity – in our capacity for compassion – has failed us so acutely. A different source, a greater power, is needed.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have witnessed such profound instances of human decency. The heroism of individuals. The bravery of those present. Emergency personnel – police officers and medical staff, those who charged into the gunfire to help others, some recognised but for the most part unnamed and unheralded.

When the barrier cordon still fluttered in the wind all about Bondi, the imperative of social, faith-based and cultural unity was laudably championed by religious figures. It was a call of compassion and acceptance – of bringing together rather than dividing in a moment of targeted violence.

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

Togetherness, hope and love was the message of belief.

‘Our public places may not appear quite the same again.’

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

Some elected officials moved straight for the darkness, using the atrocity as a calculating chance to question Australia’s migration rules.

Observe the harmful message of division from longstanding agitators of Australian racial division, exploiting the massacre before the crime scene was even cold. Then consider the words of leadership aspirants while the investigation was ongoing.

Politics has a formidable job to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is grieving and frightened and looking for the light and, not least, answers 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 grossly insufficient security presence? Like how could the accused attackers have multiple firearms in the family home when the security agency has so publicly and repeatedly warned of the danger of targeted attacks?

How quickly we were treated to that cliched line (or versions 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 firearms away from its possible perpetrators.

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

We yearn right now for comprehension and significance, for loved ones, and perhaps for the consolation of beauty in art or the natural world.

This weekend many Australians are cancelling holiday gathering plans. Reflective solitude will feel more appropriate.

But this is perhaps somewhat counterintuitive. For in these days of anxiety, outrage, melancholy, bewilderment and loss we need 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 tragically, all of the portents are that unity in public life and the community will be hard to find this extended, draining summer.