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As the nation settles into for a traditional Christmas holiday during slow-moving days of coast and scorching heat set to the soundtrack of sporting matches and insect sounds, this year the nation's summer atmosphere feels, unfortunately, like none before.

It would be a dramatic oversimplification to characterize the national disposition after the anti-Jewish violent assault on Jewish Australians during the beachside Hanukah festivities as one of mere ennui.

Across the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of the nation's urban centers – a tone of immediate shock, sorrow and terror is shifting to fury and deep polarization.

Those who had not picked up on the often voiced concerns of the Jewish community are now highly attuned. Just as, they are sensitive to reconciling the need for a much more immediate, vigorous government and institutional fight against anti-Jewish hatred with the freedom to demonstrate against genocide.

If ever there was a moment for a national listening, it is now, when our belief in mankind is so deeply diminished. This is especially so for those of us lucky never to have experienced the hatred and fear of religious and ethnic targeting on this continent 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 profound vulnerability.

This is a period when I lament not having a stronger spiritual belief. I mourn, because believing in people – in mankind’s potential for kindness – has let us down so acutely. A different source, something higher, is required.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have witnessed such profound instances of human goodness. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The bravery of those present. Emergency personnel – law enforcement and medical staff, those who ran towards the danger to help fellow humans, some publicly hailed but for the most part unnamed and unheralded.

When the police tape still fluttered wildly all about Bondi, the imperative of social, religious and cultural solidarity was admirably championed by faith leaders. It was a message of love and tolerance – of unifying rather than dividing in a moment of antisemitic slaughter.

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

Unity, hope and compassion was the essence of belief.

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

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

Some elected officials moved straight for the darkness, using tragedy as a calculating chance to question Australia’s migration rules.

Observe the harmful message of disunity from veteran fomenters of Australian racial division, exploiting the massacre before the site was even cold. Then read the words of leadership aspirants while the probe was ongoing.

Politics has a formidable job to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is grieving and scared and looking for the light and, not least, explanations to so many questions.

Like why, when the official terror alert was assessed as likely, did such a large open-air Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a grossly insufficient security presence? Like how could the alleged killers have six guns in the residence when the security agency has so publicly and consistently warned of the danger of targeted attacks?

How rapidly we were subjected to that cliched line (or versions of it) that it’s individuals not weapons that cause death. Of course, both things are true. It’s feasible to at the same time pursue new ways to prevent violent bigotry and keep firearms away from its potential actors.

In this city of immense beauty, of clear azure skies above ocean and sand, the ocean and the coastline – our communal areas – may not seem quite the same again to the multitude who’ve noted that iconic Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s obscene bloodshed.

We yearn right now for understanding and meaning, for loved ones, and perhaps for the consolation of aesthetics in culture or the natural world.

This weekend many Australians are cancelling holiday gathering plans. Reflective solitude will seem more in order.

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

The comfort of togetherness – 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 hard to find this extended, enervating summer.