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While the nation settles into for a customary Christmas holiday during slow-moving days of coast and scorching heat accompanied by the background of sporting matches and insect sounds, this year the nation's summer atmosphere feels, unfortunately, like none before.

It would be a dramatic understatement to describe the national temperament after the antisemitic terrorist attack on Jewish Australians during the beachside Hanukah celebrations as one of mere discontent.

Across the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of Australian cities – a tenor of initial surprise, grief and horror is segueing to anger and deep polarization.

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, vigorous government and institutional fight against antisemitism with the freedom to demonstrate against genocide.

If ever there was a moment for a national listening, it is now, when our faith in mankind is so sorely diminished. This is particularly so for those of us fortunate enough never to have endured the animosity and fear of religious and ethnic targeting on this land or elsewhere.

And yet the algorithms keep churning out at us the banal hot takes of those with blistering, polarizing stances but no sense at all of that terrifying vulnerability.

This is a period when I lament not having a greater faith. I lament, because having faith in humanity – in our potential for compassion – has let us down so painfully. A different source, something higher, is needed.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have witnessed such profound examples of human decency. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The selflessness of bystanders. Emergency personnel – law enforcement and medical staff, those who charged into the danger to help 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 necessity of social, religious and cultural unity was laudably promoted by faith leaders. It was a call of love and tolerance – of bringing together rather than splitting apart in a moment of antisemitic slaughter.

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

Togetherness, hope and love was the message of belief.

‘Our public places may not look exactly as they did again.’

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

Some politicians gravitated straight for the pessimism, using the atrocity as a cynical opportunity to challenge Australia’s immigration policies.

Observe the dangerous message of disunity from longstanding agitators of societal discord, capitalizing on the massacre before the crime scene was even cold. Then consider the words of leadership aspirants while the investigation 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, explanations to so many questions.

Like why, when the official terror alert was judged as likely, did such a large open-air Hanukah event go ahead with such a grossly insufficient security presence? Like how could the alleged killers have multiple firearms in the family home when the security agency has so publicly and repeatedly alerted of the threat of targeted attacks?

How quickly we were treated to that tired argument (or versions of it) that it’s people not weapons that kill. Naturally, each point are valid. It’s possible to at the same time pursue new ways to stop violent bigotry and keep firearms away from its potential actors.

In this metropolis of immense beauty, of pristine blue heavens above sea and sand, the ocean and the beaches – 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 bloodshed.

We long right now for understanding and significance, for loved ones, and perhaps for the consolation of beauty in culture or nature.

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

But this is perhaps somewhat counterintuitive. For in these times of anxiety, anger, sadness, bewilderment and grief we require each other now more than ever.

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

But sadly, all of the portents are that unity in politics and society will be hard to find this extended, enervating summer.