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As the nation settles into for a traditional Christmas holiday during languorous days of beach and scorching heat accompanied by the background of sporting matches and cicada song, this year the nation's summer mood feels, unfortunately, like no other.

It would be a significant oversimplification to describe the national disposition after the antisemitic terrorist attack on Jewish Australians 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 Australian cities – a tenor of initial surprise, sorrow and terror is shifting to fury and deep division.

Those who had previously missed the often voiced fears of the Jewish community are now acutely aware. Just as, they are sensitive to reconciling the need for a far more urgent, energetic official fight 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 humanity is so deeply depleted. This is particularly so for those of us lucky never to have endured the animosity and fear of faith-based targeting on this land or anywhere else.

And yet the social media feeds keep churning out at us the trite hot takes of those with blistering, divisive stances but little understanding at all of that profound fragility.

This is a time when I regret not having a stronger faith. I mourn, because believing in humanity – in mankind’s potential for compassion – has let us down so acutely. Something else, something higher, is needed.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have witnessed such profound examples of human goodness. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The bravery of those present. First responders – police officers and paramedics, those who ran towards the danger to aid fellow humans, some recognised but for the most part anonymous and unsung.

When the police tape still waved wildly all about Bondi, the imperative of social, religious and cultural solidarity was laudably promoted by faith leaders. It was a call of love and acceptance – of bringing together rather than splitting apart in a time of antisemitic slaughter.

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

Unity, light and compassion was the essence of faith.

‘Our shared community spaces may not appear exactly as they did again.’

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

Some elected officials gravitated straight for the pessimism, using tragedy as a calculating opportunity to question Australia’s immigration policies.

Witness the dangerous message of disunity from veteran agitators of Australian racial division, capitalizing on the massacre before the crime scene was even cold. Then consider the statements of political figures while the investigation was still active.

Politics has a daunting task to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is mourning and scared and looking for the hope and, importantly, answers to so many questions.

Like why, when the official terror alert was judged as likely, did such a large public Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a woefully insufficient protection? Like how could the accused attackers have multiple firearms in the family home when the domestic intelligence organisation has so openly and consistently alerted of the threat of targeted attacks?

How quickly we were subjected to that cliched line (or versions of it) that it’s people not weapons that cause death. Of course, each point are valid. It’s possible to at the same time seek new ways to prevent hate-fuelled violence and keep firearms away from its possible actors.

In this city of profound splendor, of pristine blue heavens above sea and sand, the water and the coastline – our shared community spaces – 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 long right now for comprehension and meaning, for family, and perhaps for the consolation of aesthetics in art or nature.

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

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

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

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