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While the nation winds down for a customary Christmas holiday during languorous days of beach and blistering heat accompanied by the background of sporting matches and cicada song, this year the country’s summer mood feels, sadly, like no other.

It would be a significant understatement to characterize the collective disposition after the antisemitic violent assault on Australian Jews during Bondi Hanukah festivities as one of mere ennui.

Across the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of the nation's urban centers – a tone of initial shock, sorrow and horror is shifting to fury and bitter division.

Those who had previously missed the frequently expressed fears of the Jewish community are now highly attuned. Similarly, they are sensitive to reconciling the need for a much more immediate, energetic government and institutional fight against antisemitism with the freedom to demonstrate against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a time for a national listening, it is now, when our belief in mankind is so deeply depleted. This is especially so for those of us fortunate enough never to have endured the animosity 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 inflammatory, polarizing views but no sense at all of that profound vulnerability.

This is a period when I regret not having a stronger spiritual belief. I mourn, because having faith in people – in mankind’s capacity for compassion – has let us down so acutely. Something else, 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 selflessness of bystanders. First responders – police officers and paramedics, those who ran towards 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, religious and cultural unity was admirably championed by faith leaders. It was a message of love and tolerance – of unifying rather than splitting apart in a time of antisemitic slaughter.

Consistent with the symbolism of the Festival of Lights (light amid darkness), there was so much appropriate reference of the need for hope.

Unity, hope and compassion 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, blame and recrimination.

Some elected officials moved straight for the darkness, using tragedy as a calculating opportunity to question Australia’s immigration policies.

Observe the dangerous message of disunity from longstanding fomenters of societal discord, exploiting the massacre before the crime scene was even cold. Then read the statements of political figures while the probe was still active.

Politics has a formidable task to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is grieving and frightened and looking for the light and, importantly, answers to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the official terror alert was judged as probable, did such a large open-air Hanukah event go ahead with such a grossly inadequate protection? Like how could the alleged killers have six guns in the residence when the domestic intelligence organisation has so publicly and repeatedly alerted of the danger of antisemitic violence?

How quickly we were subjected to that tired argument (or versions of it) that it’s individuals not weapons that kill. Of course, both things are true. It’s possible to at the same time seek new ways to prevent hate-fuelled violence and keep guns away from its possible actors.

In this metropolis of profound splendor, of pristine azure skies above ocean and sand, the water and the coastline – our shared community spaces – may not look quite the same again to the multitude who’ve observed that famous Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s horrific violence.

We long right now for comprehension and significance, for family, and perhaps for the consolation of aesthetics in culture or the natural world.

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

But this is perhaps counterintuitively against instinct. For in these times of fear, outrage, melancholy, confusion and loss we need each other more than ever.

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

But tragically, all of the indicators are that unity in politics and the community will be hard to find this extended, enervating summer.