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While the nation winds down for a customary Christmas holiday across languorous days of coast and blistering heat set to the soundtrack of Test cricket and insect sounds, this year the nation's summer mood feels, unfortunately, like no other.

It would be a dramatic understatement to describe the collective disposition after the antisemitic terrorist attack on Jewish Australians during the beachside Hanukah festivities as one of mere ennui.

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

Those who had previously missed the often voiced fears of Australian Jews are now highly attuned. Similarly, they are attuned to reconciling the need for a much more immediate, energetic government and institutional fight against anti-Jewish hatred with the right to demonstrate against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a moment for a national listening, it is now, when our belief in mankind is so deeply diminished. This is particularly so for those of us lucky never to have endured the hatred and fear of faith-based targeting on this continent or anywhere else.

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

This is a period when I lament not having a greater spiritual belief. I mourn, because having faith in humanity – in mankind’s capacity for kindness – has failed us so painfully. A different source, something higher, is needed.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have witnessed such extreme examples of human decency. The heroism of individuals. The bravery of those present. Emergency personnel – police officers and medical staff, those who charged into the gunfire to aid others, some publicly hailed but for the most part unnamed and unheralded.

When the police tape still fluttered wildly all about Bondi, the imperative of community, faith-based and cultural solidarity was laudably championed by faith leaders. It was a message of love and acceptance – of bringing together rather than dividing in a moment of targeted violence.

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

Togetherness, light and love was the message of belief.

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

And yet segments of the political landscape responded so nauseatingly swiftly with division, blame and recrimination.

Some politicians gravitated straight for the darkness, using the atrocity as a cynical opportunity to question Australia’s migration rules.

Observe the harmful rhetoric of division from veteran agitators of Australian racial division, capitalizing on the attack before the site was even cold. Then consider the statements of political figures while the investigation was still active.

Politics has a daunting task to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is grieving and frightened and seeking the hope and, not least, answers to so many questions.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was judged as likely, did such a significant public Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a grossly insufficient protection? Like how could the accused attackers have multiple firearms in the family home when the domestic intelligence organisation has so openly and repeatedly alerted of the threat of antisemitic violence?

How rapidly we were subjected to that cliched line (or iterations of it) that it’s people not guns that cause death. Naturally, each point are valid. It’s feasible to at the same time pursue new ways to prevent hate-fuelled violence and prevent firearms away from its possible actors.

In this metropolis of profound beauty, of clear blue heavens above sea and sand, the water and the coastline – our communal areas – may not seem entirely familiar again to the multitude who’ve noted that iconic Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s horrific bloodshed.

We yearn right now for comprehension and meaning, for family, and perhaps for the consolation of aesthetics in culture or nature.

This weekend many Australians are calling off Christmas party plans. Reflective solitude will seem more appropriate.

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

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

But sadly, all of the portents are that cohesion in politics and the community will be elusive this long, draining summer.