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As Australia settles into for a traditional Christmas holiday during slow-moving days of beach and scorching heat set to the background of Test cricket and cicada song, this year the country’s summer atmosphere seems, unfortunately, like no other.

It would be a dramatic understatement to describe the collective disposition after the anti-Jewish terrorist attack on Australian Jews during the beachside Hanukah celebrations as one of mere ennui.

Across the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of the nation's urban centers – a tenor of initial shock, grief and horror is segueing to fury and bitter division.

Those who had not picked up on the often voiced fears of Australian Jews are now highly attuned. Similarly, they are sensitive to balancing the need for a much more immediate, energetic government and institutional crackdown against antisemitism with the right 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 particularly so for those of us lucky never to have endured the hatred and fear of faith-based persecution on this land or anywhere else.

And yet the algorithms keep churning out at us the trite hot takes of those with blistering, divisive views but no sense at all of that profound fragility.

This is a time when I lament not having a stronger faith. I lament, because believing in humanity – in mankind’s potential for compassion – has failed us so acutely. Something else, a greater power, is required.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have seen such profound examples of human decency. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The bravery of those present. First responders – police officers and medical staff, those who charged into the gunfire to aid fellow humans, some publicly hailed but for the most part unnamed and unsung.

When the police tape still waved wildly all about Bondi, the imperative of community, faith-based and ethnic solidarity was laudably championed by religious figures. It was a call of love and acceptance – of bringing together rather than splitting apart in a time of antisemitic slaughter.

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

Unity, light and love was the essence of faith.

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

And yet elements of the political landscape responded so disgustingly quickly with division, finger-pointing and recrimination.

Some politicians moved straight for the pessimism, using tragedy as a calculating chance to question Australia’s immigration policies.

Witness the dangerous message of division from longstanding agitators of societal discord, capitalizing on the massacre before the site was even cold. Then consider the words of political figures while the probe was ongoing.

Government has a daunting job to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is mourning and frightened and seeking the light and, not least, answers to so many questions.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was assessed as probable, did such a significant public Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a grossly inadequate security presence? Like how could the alleged killers have multiple firearms in the family home when the security agency has so publicly and consistently warned of the danger of antisemitic violence?

How quickly we were treated to that cliched argument (or iterations of it) that it’s people not guns that kill. Of course, both things are true. It’s possible to simultaneously seek new ways to prevent hate-fuelled violence and prevent guns away from its possible actors.

In this metropolis of immense beauty, of pristine blue heavens above ocean and shore, the ocean and the beaches – our communal areas – may not look entirely familiar again to the many who’ve observed that iconic Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s horrific bloodshed.

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

This weekend many Australians are cancelling Christmas party plans. Reflective solitude will feel more in order.

But this is perhaps somewhat against instinct. For in these days of fear, anger, sadness, bewilderment and loss we require each other more than ever.

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

But tragically, all of the portents are that cohesion in politics and the community will be elusive this long, draining summer.