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While Australia settles into for a customary Christmas holiday across languorous days of beach and scorching heat set to the background of sporting matches and insect sounds, this year the country’s summer atmosphere seems, sadly, like none before.

It would be a dramatic understatement to characterize the national temperament after the anti-Jewish violent assault on Jewish Australians during Bondi Hanukah celebrations as one of simple ennui.

Across the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of the nation's urban centers – a tenor of immediate shock, sorrow and terror is shifting to anger and bitter division.

Those who had previously missed the frequently expressed fears of Australian Jews are now highly attuned. Similarly, they are sensitive to balancing the need for a far more urgent, energetic official crackdown against antisemitism with the freedom to demonstrate against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a moment for a national listening, it is now, when our belief in humanity is so sorely depleted. This is particularly so for those of us lucky never to have experienced the hatred and dread of religious and ethnic persecution on this land or elsewhere.

And yet the social media feeds keep spewing at us the banal hot takes of those with inflammatory, divisive stances but no sense at all of that profound fragility.

This is a period when I regret not having a greater spiritual belief. I mourn, because believing in people – in our capacity for kindness – has let us down so acutely. Something else, a greater power, is needed.

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

When the police tape still fluttered in the wind all about Bondi, the imperative of community, faith-based and cultural unity was laudably promoted by faith leaders. It was a call of compassion and tolerance – of bringing together rather than dividing in a time of targeted violence.

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

Togetherness, hope and compassion was the message of belief.

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

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

Some politicians gravitated straight for the pessimism, using tragedy as a cynical chance to question Australia’s migration rules.

Observe the harmful rhetoric of division from longstanding agitators of societal discord, exploiting the massacre before the site was even cold. Then read the words of political figures while the probe was ongoing.

Government has a daunting task to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is grieving and frightened and seeking the light and, importantly, explanations to so many questions.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was judged as probable, did such a large public Hanukah event go ahead with such a grossly inadequate security presence? Like how could the alleged killers have six guns in the residence when the domestic intelligence organisation has so publicly and consistently alerted of the threat of antisemitic violence?

How quickly we were subjected to that cliched line (or iterations of it) that it’s people not guns that kill. Of course, each point are true. It’s possible to at the same time seek new ways to prevent violent bigotry and keep guns away from its possible perpetrators.

In this city of immense beauty, of clear azure skies above sea and sand, the ocean and the beaches – our communal areas – may not seem entirely familiar again to the multitude who’ve noted that famous Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s obscene violence.

We yearn right now for comprehension and significance, for family, and perhaps for the solace of beauty in art or the natural world.

This weekend many Australians are cancelling Christmas party plans. Quiet contemplation will feel more in order.

But this is perhaps counterintuitively against instinct. For in these times of anxiety, anger, melancholy, confusion and loss we require each other more than ever.

The comfort of community – 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 extended, draining summer.