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While Australia settles into for a customary Christmas holiday during slow-moving days of beach and scorching heat accompanied by the background of Test cricket and insect sounds, this year the nation's summer mood seems, sadly, like none before.

It would be a significant understatement to characterize the national disposition after the anti-Jewish violent assault on Australian Jews during the beachside Hanukah celebrations as one of mere discontent.

Across the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of Australian cities – a tenor of initial surprise, sorrow and horror is shifting to anger and deep polarization.

Those who had previously missed 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, energetic government and institutional crackdown against anti-Jewish hatred with the right to demonstrate against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a time for a national listening, it is now, when our belief in humanity is so deeply depleted. This is especially so for those of us lucky never to have experienced the hatred and dread of religious and ethnic targeting on this continent or elsewhere.

And yet the algorithms keep churning out at us the trite hot takes of those with blistering, divisive views but no sense at all of that terrifying fragility.

This is a time when I regret not having a greater faith. I mourn, because believing in humanity – in our potential for compassion – has failed us so acutely. A different source, a greater power, is needed.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have witnessed 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 aid fellow humans, some recognised but for the most part anonymous and unsung.

When the barrier cordon still fluttered in the wind all about Bondi, the necessity of social, religious and ethnic unity was admirably championed by religious figures. It was a call of compassion and tolerance – of unifying rather than dividing in a moment of targeted violence.

In keeping with the meaning of the Festival of Lights (light amid darkness), there was so much fitting reference of the need for lightness.

Unity, hope and love was the message of faith.

‘Our shared community spaces may not look quite the same again.’

And yet segments of the Australian polity responded so nauseatingly swiftly with division, finger-pointing and recrimination.

Some elected officials moved straight for the darkness, using tragedy as a calculating opportunity to challenge Australia’s immigration policies.

Observe the dangerous rhetoric of disunity from veteran fomenters of societal discord, exploiting the attack before the crime scene was even cold. Then read the words of political figures while the investigation was ongoing.

Politics has a formidable job to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is grieving and scared and seeking 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 open-air Hanukah event go ahead with such a grossly inadequate protection? Like how could the accused attackers have multiple firearms in the family home when the domestic intelligence organisation has so openly and consistently warned of the danger of targeted attacks?

How rapidly we were treated to that tired line (or versions of it) that it’s people not guns that cause death. Of course, each point are true. It’s feasible to simultaneously pursue new ways to stop hate-fuelled violence and keep firearms away from its potential perpetrators.

In this metropolis of immense splendor, of clear azure skies above sea and sand, the ocean and the coastline – our communal areas – may not seem entirely familiar again to the many who’ve observed that iconic Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s obscene bloodshed.

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

This weekend many Australians are calling off holiday gathering plans. Reflective solitude will feel more appropriate.

But this is perhaps somewhat counterintuitive. For in these days of anxiety, anger, sadness, bewilderment and grief we require each other 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 indicators are that unity in politics and the community will be elusive this extended, enervating summer.