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While the nation settles into for a customary Christmas holiday during slow-moving days of coast and scorching heat set to the background of sporting matches 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 temperament after the antisemitic violent assault on Australian Jews during Bondi Hanukah festivities as one of mere ennui.

Across the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of Australian cities – a tone of immediate shock, grief and terror is shifting to fury and deep division.

Those who had not picked up on the often voiced concerns of Australian Jews are now highly attuned. Similarly, they are sensitive to balancing the need for a far more urgent, energetic government and institutional crackdown against anti-Jewish hatred with the freedom to demonstrate against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a time for a national listening, it is now, when our belief in humanity is so deeply diminished. 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 anywhere else.

And yet the algorithms keep spewing at us the banal instant opinions of those with inflammatory, polarizing views but no sense at all of that terrifying vulnerability.

This is a time when I regret not having a stronger spiritual belief. I mourn, because believing in people – in our potential for kindness – has let us down so painfully. A different source, a greater power, is needed.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have witnessed such extreme instances of human goodness. 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 help others, some recognised but for the most part unnamed and unsung.

When the police tape still fluttered in the wind all about Bondi, the necessity of community, faith-based and cultural solidarity was admirably championed by faith leaders. It was a message of love and acceptance – of unifying rather than dividing in a moment of antisemitic slaughter.

Consistent with the meaning of Hanukah (light amid darkness), there was so much fitting reference of the need for hope.

Togetherness, hope and compassion was the message of faith.

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

And yet elements of the Australian polity reacted so disgustingly quickly with division, finger-pointing and accusation.

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

Witness the dangerous message of division from veteran agitators of Australian racial division, exploiting the attack before the site was even cold. Then consider the statements of leadership aspirants while the probe was ongoing.

Government has a daunting job to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is mourning and scared and looking for the hope and, importantly, answers to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was assessed as likely, did such a large open-air Hanukah event go ahead with such a grossly inadequate protection? Like how could the alleged killers have six guns in the residence when the security agency has so publicly and consistently warned of the danger of antisemitic violence?

How rapidly we were subjected to that cliched line (or versions of it) that it’s individuals not weapons that kill. Naturally, each point are true. It’s possible to at the same time seek new ways to stop violent bigotry and prevent guns away from its possible actors.

In this city of profound beauty, of pristine azure skies above ocean and sand, the ocean and the beaches – our shared community spaces – may not look entirely familiar again to the multitude who’ve observed that iconic Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s obscene bloodshed.

We long right now for comprehension and significance, for loved ones, and perhaps for the consolation of beauty in art or the natural world.

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

But this is perhaps counterintuitively counterintuitive. For in these days of fear, anger, melancholy, bewilderment and grief we need each other 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 cohesion in politics and the community will be elusive this long, draining summer.