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While Australia winds down for a customary Christmas holiday across slow-moving days of beach and scorching heat set to the background of sporting matches and cicada song, this year the nation's summer atmosphere feels, unfortunately, like none before.

It would be a significant understatement to describe the national disposition after the antisemitic violent assault on Australian Jews during Bondi Hanukah celebrations as one of mere ennui.

Throughout the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of Australian cities – a tenor of initial surprise, sorrow and terror is segueing to fury and bitter polarization.

Those who had previously missed the often voiced fears of Australian Jews are now highly attuned. 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 freedom to peacefully protest against mass atrocities.

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

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

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

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have seen such extreme instances of human decency. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The selflessness of bystanders. First responders – law enforcement and paramedics, those who ran towards the danger to aid others, some recognised but for the most part unnamed and unheralded.

When the police tape still waved wildly all about Bondi, the necessity of social, religious and ethnic solidarity was admirably promoted by religious figures. It was a message of love and tolerance – of unifying rather than splitting apart in a moment of antisemitic slaughter.

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

Unity, hope and love was the message of belief.

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

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

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

Witness the harmful rhetoric of disunity from longstanding agitators of societal discord, capitalizing on the massacre before the site was even cold. Then read the words of leadership aspirants while the investigation was still active.

Government has a formidable task to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is grieving and frightened and looking for the hope and, importantly, explanations to so many questions.

Like why, when the official terror alert was assessed as likely, did such a large open-air Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a woefully insufficient protection? Like how could the accused attackers have six guns in the residence when the domestic intelligence organisation has so publicly and repeatedly warned of the danger of targeted attacks?

How quickly we were subjected to that tired line (or versions of it) that it’s people not guns that cause death. Naturally, both things are true. It’s possible to at the same time pursue new ways to stop hate-fuelled violence and keep guns away from its potential perpetrators.

In this city of profound splendor, of pristine blue heavens above sea and shore, the water and the coastline – our communal areas – may not look quite the same again to the many who’ve noted that iconic Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s horrific bloodshed.

We yearn right now for understanding and significance, for loved ones, and perhaps for the consolation of aesthetics in art or nature.

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

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

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

But sadly, all of the indicators are that unity in public life and the community will be elusive this long, draining summer.