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As Australia winds down for a traditional Christmas holiday across languorous days of coast and blistering heat accompanied by the soundtrack of sporting matches and cicada song, this year the nation's summer mood feels, sadly, like no other.

It would be a dramatic understatement to describe the collective disposition after the antisemitic terrorist attack on Jewish Australians during Bondi 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 horror is segueing to anger and deep division.

Those who had not picked up on the frequently expressed concerns of Australian Jews are now highly attuned. Similarly, they are sensitive to reconciling the need for a far more urgent, vigorous government and institutional crackdown against antisemitism with the right to peacefully protest against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a time for a national listening, it is now, when our faith in mankind is so sorely diminished. This is particularly so for those of us lucky never to have endured the animosity and fear of faith-based persecution on this land or anywhere else.

And yet the algorithms keep churning out at us the trite hot takes of those with blistering, divisive views but little understanding at all of that terrifying vulnerability.

This is a time when I lament not having a greater spiritual belief. I mourn, because having faith in humanity – in mankind’s potential for compassion – has failed us so painfully. A different source, a greater power, 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 bravery of those present. Emergency personnel – law enforcement and medical staff, those who charged into the danger to aid others, some recognised but for the most part unnamed and unheralded.

When the barrier cordon 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 tolerance – of bringing together rather than splitting apart in a moment 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, light and compassion was the message of belief.

‘Our shared community spaces may not appear quite the same again.’

And yet elements of the political landscape responded so nauseatingly quickly with fragmentation, blame and accusation.

Some elected officials gravitated straight for the darkness, using tragedy as a calculating opportunity to question Australia’s immigration policies.

Observe the dangerous rhetoric of disunity from longstanding agitators of Australian racial division, capitalizing on the massacre before the site was even cold. Then read the words of political figures while the probe was still active.

Politics has a formidable job to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is grieving and frightened and seeking the light and, importantly, explanations to so many questions.

Like why, when the official terror alert was assessed as probable, did such a large open-air Hanukah event go ahead with such a woefully inadequate protection? Like how could the alleged killers have six guns in the residence when the security agency has so openly and repeatedly alerted of the danger of targeted attacks?

How quickly we were treated to that tired argument (or iterations of it) that it’s individuals not guns that cause death. Naturally, each point are true. It’s feasible to at the same time pursue new ways to stop violent bigotry and keep firearms away from its possible actors.

In this metropolis of profound beauty, of clear blue heavens above ocean and shore, the ocean and the beaches – our communal areas – may not seem quite the same again to the many who’ve noted that iconic Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s obscene violence.

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

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

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

The comfort of community – the binding force 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 the community will be elusive this extended, draining summer.