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As Australia winds down for a traditional Christmas holiday during languorous days of beach and blistering heat set to the soundtrack of sporting matches and cicada song, this year the country’s summer mood feels, sadly, like no other.

It would be a significant oversimplification to describe the collective temperament 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 postcard picturesque of the nation's urban centers – a tenor of immediate surprise, grief and horror is shifting to fury and bitter polarization.

Those who had not picked up on the often voiced fears of the Jewish community are now acutely aware. Similarly, they are sensitive to balancing the need for a much more immediate, vigorous official fight against anti-Jewish hatred with the right to peacefully protest against genocide.

If ever there was a time for a national listening, it is now, when our belief in humanity 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 persecution on this land or anywhere else.

And yet the algorithms keep spewing at us the trite hot takes of those with inflammatory, polarizing stances but no sense at all of that profound fragility.

This is a time when I regret not having a stronger faith. I mourn, because having faith in people – in our capacity for kindness – has let us down so painfully. Something else, a greater power, is required.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have witnessed such profound instances of human goodness. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The selflessness of bystanders. First responders – law enforcement and paramedics, those who ran towards the gunfire to aid fellow humans, some publicly hailed but for the most part unnamed and unsung.

When the police tape still fluttered wildly all about Bondi, the imperative of social, religious and ethnic unity was admirably championed by religious figures. It was a message of love and tolerance – of bringing together rather than dividing in a moment of targeted violence.

Consistent with the meaning of Hanukah (illumination amid gloom), there was so much fitting evocation of the need for hope.

Unity, hope and compassion was the message of faith.

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

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

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

Witness the harmful message of division from longstanding 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.

Government has a daunting 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 questions.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was judged as probable, did such a significant public Hanukah event go ahead with such a woefully inadequate protection? Like how could the alleged killers have multiple firearms in the residence when the security agency has so openly and consistently warned 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. Naturally, each point are valid. It’s possible to at the same time pursue new ways to prevent hate-fuelled violence and prevent firearms away from its potential actors.

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

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

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

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

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

But tragically, all of the portents are that unity in politics and society will be hard to find this long, draining summer.