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While the nation settles into for a customary Christmas holiday during slow-moving days of coast and blistering heat accompanied by the soundtrack of Test cricket and insect sounds, this year the nation's summer mood feels, unfortunately, like none before.

It would be a dramatic understatement to characterize the collective disposition after the anti-Jewish terrorist attack on Australian Jews during Bondi Hanukah celebrations as one of mere discontent.

Throughout 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 horror is shifting to fury and bitter division.

Those who had not picked up on the often voiced fears of Australian Jews are now highly attuned. 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 humanity is so deeply depleted. This is especially so for those of us fortunate enough never to have experienced the hatred and dread of religious and ethnic targeting on this continent or elsewhere.

And yet the social media feeds keep spewing at us the trite hot takes of those with blistering, divisive stances but no sense at all of that terrifying vulnerability.

This is a time when I regret not having a greater faith. I lament, because having faith in people – in our capacity for compassion – has failed us so acutely. Something else, a greater power, is required.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have seen such extreme examples of human decency. The heroism of individuals. The bravery of those present. Emergency personnel – police officers and medical staff, those who charged into the gunfire to help fellow humans, some recognised but for the most part anonymous and unsung.

When the barrier cordon still waved in the wind all about Bondi, the imperative of community, religious and ethnic solidarity was admirably championed by religious figures. It was a call of compassion and acceptance – of unifying rather than dividing in a moment of targeted violence.

In keeping with the symbolism of Hanukah (illumination amid darkness), there was so much appropriate reference of the need for lightness.

Unity, hope and compassion was the essence of belief.

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

And yet elements of the political landscape responded so nauseatingly swiftly with division, blame and recrimination.

Some politicians gravitated straight for the darkness, using tragedy as a cynical opportunity to question Australia’s immigration policies.

Observe the harmful message of division from longstanding agitators of Australian racial division, exploiting the attack before the site was even cold. Then consider the statements of political figures while the probe was ongoing.

Government has a formidable task to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is grieving and scared and looking for the light and, not least, explanations to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was judged as likely, did such a large public Hanukah event go ahead with such a woefully inadequate protection? Like how could the accused attackers have six guns in the family home when the domestic intelligence organisation 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 guns that cause death. Of course, both things are valid. It’s possible to simultaneously seek new ways to prevent violent bigotry and keep guns away from its possible perpetrators.

In this metropolis of immense beauty, of pristine azure skies above ocean and shore, the water and the beaches – our communal areas – may not look entirely familiar again to the multitude who’ve noted that famous Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s horrific violence.

We long right now for comprehension and significance, for loved ones, and perhaps for the consolation of aesthetics in art or nature.

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

But this is perhaps somewhat counterintuitive. For in these times of fear, outrage, sadness, bewilderment and loss we need each other now more than ever.

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

But tragically, all of the portents are that cohesion in public life and society will be hard to find this long, enervating summer.