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As the nation winds down for a customary Christmas holiday across slow-moving days of coast and scorching heat accompanied by the soundtrack of Test cricket and insect sounds, this year the nation's summer atmosphere seems, sadly, like no other.

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

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

Those who had previously missed the frequently expressed concerns of Australian Jews are now highly attuned. Just as, they are attuned to balancing the need for a much more immediate, vigorous government and institutional crackdown against anti-Jewish hatred with the freedom 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 depleted. This is especially so for those of us lucky never to have experienced the animosity and dread of faith-based targeting on this land or anywhere else.

And yet the social media feeds keep spewing at us the banal hot takes of those with inflammatory, divisive views but little understanding at all of that terrifying vulnerability.

This is a period when I lament not having a stronger faith. I lament, because believing in humanity – in mankind’s capacity for kindness – has failed us so acutely. A different source, something higher, is needed.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have seen such extreme instances of human goodness. The courageous acts of ordinary people. 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 unheralded.

When the barrier cordon still fluttered wildly all about Bondi, the necessity of social, religious and cultural solidarity was laudably promoted by faith leaders. It was a call of compassion and tolerance – of unifying rather than dividing in a moment of targeted violence.

Consistent with the symbolism of Hanukah (illumination amid gloom), there was so much appropriate reference of the need for hope.

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 reacted so nauseatingly swiftly with fragmentation, finger-pointing and accusation.

Some politicians gravitated straight for the darkness, using tragedy as a cynical opportunity to challenge Australia’s migration rules.

Observe the dangerous rhetoric of division from longstanding agitators of Australian racial division, exploiting the massacre before the crime scene was even cold. Then read the statements of political figures while the probe was ongoing.

Government has a formidable job to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is mourning and scared and seeking the light and, not least, explanations to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the official terror alert was judged as probable, did such a significant public Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a woefully inadequate protection? Like how could the accused attackers have six guns in the residence when the domestic intelligence organisation has so publicly and repeatedly alerted of the danger of antisemitic violence?

How rapidly we were subjected to that cliched line (or versions of it) that it’s people not weapons that kill. Of course, both things are valid. It’s possible to at the same time pursue new ways to stop violent bigotry and keep guns away from its possible perpetrators.

In this metropolis of immense splendor, of clear azure skies above ocean and shore, the ocean and the coastline – our shared community spaces – may not seem entirely familiar again to the multitude who’ve noted that iconic Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s obscene bloodshed.

We long right now for understanding and meaning, for family, and perhaps for the solace of aesthetics in art or nature.

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

But this is perhaps somewhat counterintuitive. For in these times of fear, outrage, melancholy, confusion and grief we require each other now more than ever.

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

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