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While the nation settles into for a traditional Christmas holiday during slow-moving days of coast and blistering heat set to the soundtrack of Test cricket and insect sounds, this year the nation's summer atmosphere seems, sadly, like no other.

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

Throughout the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of the nation's urban centers – a tone of immediate surprise, sorrow and terror is shifting to anger and bitter polarization.

Those who had previously missed the often voiced fears of Australian Jews are now acutely aware. Similarly, they are sensitive to balancing the need for a far more urgent, energetic official crackdown against anti-Jewish hatred with the right to peacefully protest against genocide.

If ever there was a time for a national listening, it is now, when our belief in mankind is so sorely diminished. This is especially so for those of us lucky never to have experienced the hatred and dread of religious and ethnic persecution on this land or anywhere else.

And yet the algorithms keep spewing at us the banal instant opinions of those with inflammatory, polarizing views but no sense at all of that profound fragility.

This is a time when I regret not having a greater spiritual belief. I mourn, because having faith in humanity – in mankind’s potential for kindness – has failed us so painfully. A different source, a greater power, is required.

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 charged into the danger to aid fellow humans, some publicly hailed but for the most part anonymous and unheralded.

When the barrier cordon still fluttered in the wind all about Bondi, the imperative of social, faith-based and ethnic solidarity was admirably promoted by faith leaders. It was a message of love and tolerance – of bringing together rather than splitting apart in a moment of antisemitic slaughter.

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

Togetherness, light and love was the message of belief.

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

And yet elements of the Australian polity responded so disgustingly quickly with fragmentation, finger-pointing and recrimination.

Some politicians moved straight for the pessimism, using the atrocity as a cynical opportunity to challenge Australia’s migration rules.

Witness the dangerous rhetoric of division from longstanding agitators of societal discord, capitalizing on the attack before the crime scene was even cold. Then consider the words of leadership aspirants while the probe was still active.

Government has a daunting job to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is mourning and frightened and looking for the light and, importantly, explanations to so many questions.

Like why, when the official terror alert was assessed as likely, did such a large open-air Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a grossly inadequate protection? Like how could the accused attackers have six guns in the residence when the domestic intelligence organisation has so openly and consistently warned of the danger of targeted attacks?

How quickly we were treated to that cliched line (or iterations of it) that it’s people not weapons that cause death. Naturally, each point are valid. It’s feasible to simultaneously seek new ways to prevent violent bigotry and keep guns away from its possible actors.

In this metropolis of immense beauty, of clear azure skies above ocean and shore, the water and the beaches – our shared community spaces – may not look quite the same again to the multitude who’ve noted that famous Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s obscene bloodshed.

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

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

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

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

But tragically, all of the indicators are that cohesion in politics and society will be elusive this long, enervating summer.