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While the nation winds down for a traditional Christmas holiday during languorous days of beach and scorching heat accompanied by the background of Test cricket and insect sounds, this year the nation's summer atmosphere seems, sadly, like none before.

It would be a significant oversimplification to characterize the national disposition after the anti-Jewish terrorist attack on Australian Jews during Bondi Hanukah festivities as one of simple discontent.

Throughout the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of the nation's urban centers – a tone of initial shock, grief and horror is segueing to anger and bitter division.

Those who had not picked up on the frequently expressed fears of Australian Jews are now acutely aware. Similarly, they are attuned to reconciling the need for a far more urgent, energetic official 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 mankind is so deeply diminished. This is especially so for those of us lucky never to have experienced the animosity and fear of faith-based targeting on this continent or elsewhere.

And yet the social media feeds keep churning out at us the banal instant opinions of those with blistering, divisive stances but little understanding at all of that profound vulnerability.

This is a period when I regret not having a stronger faith. I mourn, because believing in people – in our capacity for kindness – has failed us so acutely. Something else, a greater power, is required.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have witnessed such extreme instances of human goodness. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The selflessness of bystanders. Emergency personnel – police officers and paramedics, those who ran towards the danger to aid fellow humans, some publicly hailed but for the most part anonymous and unsung.

When the barrier cordon still fluttered wildly all about Bondi, the necessity of community, faith-based and cultural solidarity was admirably promoted by faith leaders. It was a call of compassion and acceptance – of unifying rather than splitting apart in a time of targeted violence.

Consistent with the meaning of the Festival of Lights (illumination amid darkness), there was so much fitting reference of the need for lightness.

Unity, light and love was the essence of belief.

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

And yet segments of the Australian polity responded so disgustingly swiftly with division, blame and recrimination.

Some politicians moved straight for the pessimism, using tragedy as a calculating chance to challenge Australia’s migration rules.

Observe the dangerous message of disunity from veteran agitators of Australian racial division, exploiting the attack before the site was even cold. Then read the statements of leadership aspirants while the probe was ongoing.

Government has a daunting job to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is grieving and frightened and looking for the hope and, not least, answers to so many questions.

Like why, when the official terror alert was assessed as likely, did such a large public Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a woefully inadequate protection? Like how could the accused attackers have six guns in the family home when the domestic intelligence organisation has so publicly and repeatedly alerted of the danger of targeted attacks?

How quickly we were treated to that tired argument (or versions of it) that it’s individuals not weapons that kill. Naturally, each point are valid. It’s possible to simultaneously seek new ways to prevent hate-fuelled violence and keep guns away from its possible perpetrators.

In this city of profound beauty, of pristine blue heavens above ocean and shore, the water and the coastline – our communal areas – may not seem quite the same again to the many who’ve noted that iconic Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s horrific violence.

We long right now for comprehension and meaning, for loved ones, and perhaps for the solace of aesthetics in art or nature.

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

But this is perhaps counterintuitively against instinct. For in these days of anxiety, anger, melancholy, confusion 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 sadly, all of the indicators are that unity in politics and the community will be elusive this long, draining summer.