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As Australia settles into for a traditional Christmas holiday during languorous days of coast and scorching heat set to the background of Test cricket and cicada song, this year the nation's summer atmosphere feels, sadly, like none before.

It would be a dramatic oversimplification to describe the collective disposition after the anti-Jewish terrorist attack on Jewish Australians during the beachside Hanukah celebrations as one of simple discontent.

Throughout the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of Australian cities – a tenor of initial surprise, sorrow and terror is segueing to anger and deep division.

Those who had not picked up on the frequently expressed concerns of the Jewish community are now highly attuned. Similarly, they are attuned to reconciling the need for a far more urgent, vigorous government and institutional 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 mankind is so deeply diminished. This is especially so for those of us lucky never to have experienced the animosity and fear of faith-based persecution on this land or anywhere else.

And yet the social media feeds keep spewing at us the trite instant opinions of those with inflammatory, divisive stances but little understanding at all of that terrifying fragility.

This is a time when I lament not having a greater spiritual belief. I mourn, because having faith in people – in mankind’s capacity for kindness – has let us down so acutely. Something else, a greater power, is needed.

And yet from the horror 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 charged into the danger to aid fellow humans, some publicly hailed but for the most part unnamed and unsung.

When the barrier cordon still waved in the wind all about Bondi, the imperative of social, religious and ethnic solidarity was laudably promoted by faith leaders. It was a call of compassion and acceptance – of unifying rather than dividing in a time of antisemitic slaughter.

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

Unity, hope and compassion was the essence of faith.

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

And yet segments of the Australian polity responded so disgustingly swiftly with fragmentation, blame and accusation.

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

Witness the dangerous message of disunity from veteran fomenters of Australian racial division, exploiting the massacre before the crime scene was even cold. Then consider the words of political figures while the probe was still active.

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

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was judged as likely, did such a large open-air Hanukah event go ahead with such a grossly inadequate security presence? Like how could the accused attackers have six guns in the family home when the security agency has so openly and consistently alerted of the danger of targeted attacks?

How quickly we were treated to that cliched argument (or versions of it) that it’s people not guns that kill. Of course, both things are true. It’s possible to simultaneously seek new ways to prevent violent bigotry and prevent guns away from its possible actors.

In this city of profound splendor, of clear azure skies above sea and shore, the ocean and the coastline – our communal areas – may not seem entirely familiar again to the multitude who’ve observed that famous Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s obscene bloodshed.

We long right now for understanding and significance, for family, and perhaps for the solace of aesthetics in art or nature.

This weekend many Australians are calling off holiday gathering plans. Reflective solitude will seem more appropriate.

But this is perhaps somewhat counterintuitive. For in these days of anxiety, anger, melancholy, confusion and loss we need each other now more than ever.

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

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