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As Australia settles into for a customary Christmas holiday across languorous days of beach and scorching heat accompanied by the soundtrack of Test cricket and cicada song, this year the nation's summer atmosphere feels, unfortunately, like none before.

It would be a dramatic oversimplification to describe the national disposition after the anti-Jewish terrorist attack on Jewish Australians during Bondi Hanukah festivities as one of simple ennui.

Throughout the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of Australian cities – a tenor of immediate shock, grief and horror is shifting to fury and deep division.

Those who had not picked up on the often voiced fears of Australian Jews are now acutely aware. Just as, they are attuned to balancing the need for a much more immediate, vigorous official crackdown against anti-Jewish hatred with the right to demonstrate against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a moment for a national listening, it is now, when our belief in mankind is so sorely diminished. This is particularly so for those of us fortunate enough never to have endured the animosity and fear of faith-based targeting on this land or elsewhere.

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

This is a period when I lament not having a stronger spiritual belief. I lament, because having faith in people – in mankind’s potential for compassion – has failed us so painfully. Something else, something higher, is needed.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have seen such profound examples of human goodness. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The selflessness of bystanders. First responders – police officers and medical staff, those who ran towards the gunfire to help others, some publicly hailed but for the most part unnamed and unheralded.

When the police tape still fluttered in the wind all about Bondi, the imperative of social, religious and cultural unity was laudably promoted by religious figures. It was a message of love and tolerance – of unifying rather than splitting apart in a time of antisemitic slaughter.

Consistent with the symbolism of the Festival of Lights (light amid gloom), there was so much appropriate evocation of the need for hope.

Unity, hope and love was the message of faith.

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

And yet segments of the Australian polity responded so disgustingly quickly with fragmentation, finger-pointing and recrimination.

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

Observe the dangerous message of disunity from longstanding agitators of Australian racial division, capitalizing on the massacre before the site was even cold. Then read the statements of political figures while the investigation was ongoing.

Government has a daunting task to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is grieving and scared and looking for the light and, not least, answers to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was assessed as probable, did such a significant public Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a woefully insufficient protection? Like how could the alleged killers have multiple firearms in the residence when the security agency has so publicly and consistently alerted of the danger of antisemitic violence?

How quickly we were treated to that cliched line (or iterations of it) that it’s people not guns that cause death. Of course, each point are valid. It’s feasible to at the same time pursue new ways to prevent violent bigotry and keep firearms away from its possible actors.

In this metropolis of profound splendor, of pristine azure skies above ocean and sand, the water and the coastline – our communal areas – may not look quite the same again to the many who’ve observed that famous Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s obscene bloodshed.

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

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 days of anxiety, anger, melancholy, confusion and grief we require each other more than ever.

The reassurance 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 unity in public life and society will be elusive this extended, enervating summer.