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As Australia winds down for a customary Christmas holiday across slow-moving days of coast and blistering heat set to the background of Test cricket and insect sounds, this year the nation's summer mood seems, unfortunately, like no other.

It would be a significant understatement to describe the collective disposition after the anti-Jewish violent assault on Jewish Australians during Bondi Hanukah celebrations as one of mere discontent.

Across the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of Australian cities – a tenor of immediate surprise, sorrow and horror is shifting to fury and bitter polarization.

Those who had previously missed the often voiced concerns of Australian Jews are now acutely aware. Similarly, they are sensitive to reconciling the need for a far more urgent, vigorous official fight against antisemitism with the right to peacefully protest 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 lucky never to have endured the hatred and dread of religious and ethnic persecution on this continent or anywhere else.

And yet the social media feeds keep spewing at us the banal hot takes of those with inflammatory, polarizing views but little understanding at all of that terrifying vulnerability.

This is a period when I lament not having a stronger spiritual belief. I lament, because believing in humanity – in our potential for kindness – has failed us so painfully. Something else, something higher, is required.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have witnessed such profound examples of human goodness. The heroism of individuals. The bravery of those present. Emergency personnel – police officers and medical staff, those who ran towards the danger to aid others, some publicly hailed but for the most part anonymous and unheralded.

When the barrier cordon still waved in the wind all about Bondi, the imperative of social, faith-based and ethnic unity was admirably championed by religious figures. It was a message of compassion and tolerance – of unifying rather than dividing in a moment of targeted violence.

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

Togetherness, hope and compassion was the message of belief.

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

And yet elements of the political landscape reacted so disgustingly swiftly with division, finger-pointing and recrimination.

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

Witness the dangerous rhetoric of division from veteran fomenters of Australian racial division, capitalizing on the massacre before the crime scene was even cold. Then consider the words of leadership aspirants while the probe was ongoing.

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

Like why, when the official terror alert was assessed as probable, did such a large public Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a grossly insufficient security presence? Like how could the alleged killers have multiple firearms in the family home when the domestic intelligence organisation has so publicly and consistently alerted of the danger of antisemitic violence?

How rapidly we were treated to that tired line (or iterations of it) that it’s individuals not weapons that cause death. Naturally, both things are valid. It’s feasible to at the same time pursue new ways to prevent violent bigotry and prevent guns away from its possible actors.

In this city of profound splendor, of clear blue heavens above sea and shore, the ocean and the beaches – our shared community spaces – may not look entirely familiar again to the multitude who’ve observed that famous Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s obscene violence.

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

This weekend many Australians are calling off Christmas party plans. Quiet contemplation will feel more in order.

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

The reassurance of togetherness – the human glue of the unity in the very word – is what we likely need most.

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