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

It would be a dramatic oversimplification to characterize the collective temperament after the anti-Jewish violent assault on Jewish Australians during Bondi Hanukah celebrations as one of simple discontent.

Throughout the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of Australian cities – a tone of initial shock, sorrow and terror is segueing to fury and bitter polarization.

Those who had previously missed the often voiced concerns of Australian Jews are now acutely aware. Just as, they are attuned to balancing the need for a far more urgent, vigorous official fight against antisemitism with the right to demonstrate against genocide.

If ever there was a time for a national listening, it is now, when our faith in humanity is so deeply depleted. This is particularly so for those of us fortunate enough never to have endured the animosity and dread of faith-based persecution on this continent or anywhere else.

And yet the social media feeds keep churning out at us the trite hot takes of those with inflammatory, divisive views but little understanding at all of that terrifying fragility.

This is a time when I regret not having a greater faith. I lament, because having faith in humanity – in our capacity for kindness – has failed us so painfully. Something else, something higher, is needed.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have witnessed such profound instances of human decency. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The selflessness of bystanders. First responders – police officers and medical staff, those who charged into the gunfire to help fellow humans, some recognised but for the most part anonymous and unheralded.

When the police tape still fluttered in the wind all about Bondi, the necessity of community, religious and cultural solidarity was admirably championed by faith leaders. It was a message of love and acceptance – of unifying rather than dividing in a time of antisemitic slaughter.

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

Unity, light and love was the essence of faith.

‘Our public places may not appear exactly as they did again.’

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

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

Witness the harmful rhetoric of disunity from veteran agitators of societal discord, exploiting the massacre before the crime scene was even cold. Then consider the statements of leadership aspirants while the probe was still active.

Politics has a daunting job to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is grieving and scared and seeking the hope and, importantly, answers to so many questions.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was assessed as likely, did such a large open-air Hanukah event go ahead with such a grossly inadequate protection? Like how could the accused attackers have six guns in the residence when the security agency has so publicly and consistently warned of the danger of antisemitic violence?

How quickly we were subjected to that cliched line (or versions of it) that it’s people not weapons that kill. Naturally, each point are valid. It’s possible to simultaneously pursue new ways to prevent hate-fuelled violence and prevent firearms away from its potential actors.

In this city of immense 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 multitude who’ve noted that iconic Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s horrific violence.

We yearn right now for understanding and meaning, for family, and perhaps for the consolation of beauty in art or the natural world.

This weekend many Australians are cancelling Christmas party plans. Quiet contemplation will seem more in order.

But this is perhaps somewhat against instinct. For in these days of fear, outrage, sadness, bewilderment and grief we require each other now more than ever.

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

But sadly, all of the portents are that unity in politics and society will be elusive this extended, enervating summer.