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While Australia settles into for a customary Christmas holiday during slow-moving days of coast and blistering heat set to the soundtrack of sporting matches and cicada song, this year the nation's summer mood seems, unfortunately, like none before.

It would be a significant understatement to describe the national disposition after the antisemitic 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 postcard picturesque of Australian cities – a tenor of initial surprise, grief and horror is shifting to anger and bitter division.

Those who had previously missed the frequently expressed fears of Australian Jews are now acutely aware. Just as, they are sensitive to balancing the need for a much more immediate, energetic official crackdown against antisemitism with the freedom to peacefully protest against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a moment for a national listening, it is now, when our belief in humanity is so sorely depleted. This is especially so for those of us lucky never to have endured the hatred and fear of faith-based persecution on this continent or anywhere else.

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

This is a period when I regret not having a stronger spiritual belief. I mourn, because having faith in people – in our capacity for kindness – has failed us so acutely. Something else, something higher, is needed.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have witnessed such profound instances of human decency. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The bravery of those present. Emergency personnel – police officers and paramedics, those who ran towards the danger to help others, some recognised but for the most part anonymous and unheralded.

When the police tape still waved wildly all about Bondi, the imperative of social, religious and cultural unity was admirably championed by religious figures. It was a call of compassion and tolerance – of bringing together rather than dividing in a time of targeted violence.

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

Togetherness, light and love was the essence of faith.

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

And yet elements of the Australian polity reacted so nauseatingly swiftly with division, blame and recrimination.

Some elected officials moved straight for the pessimism, using the atrocity as a cynical chance to challenge Australia’s migration rules.

Observe the harmful message of division from veteran agitators of societal discord, capitalizing on the massacre before the crime scene was even cold. Then read the statements of leadership aspirants while the probe was still active.

Politics has a formidable task to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is mourning and scared and seeking the hope and, not least, answers to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the official terror alert 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 family home when the domestic intelligence organisation has so publicly and repeatedly warned of the threat of targeted attacks?

How quickly we were subjected to that cliched argument (or versions of it) that it’s people not guns that cause death. Naturally, each point are valid. It’s feasible to simultaneously pursue new ways to stop hate-fuelled violence and prevent guns away from its potential actors.

In this metropolis of immense beauty, of pristine blue heavens above ocean and sand, the ocean and the coastline – our communal areas – may not seem quite the same again to the multitude who’ve observed that iconic Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s horrific violence.

We long right now for comprehension and significance, for family, and perhaps for the solace of beauty in culture or the natural world.

This weekend many Australians are cancelling Christmas party plans. Reflective solitude will seem more appropriate.

But this is perhaps counterintuitively against instinct. For in these times of fear, anger, melancholy, confusion and grief we need each other more than ever.

The reassurance of togetherness – the binding force of the unity in the very word – is what we probably need most.

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