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While the nation settles into 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 country’s summer mood seems, sadly, like none before.

It would be a dramatic oversimplification to describe the national disposition after the antisemitic terrorist attack on Jewish Australians during Bondi Hanukah celebrations as one of simple discontent.

Across the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of the nation's urban centers – a tone of initial shock, sorrow and terror is shifting to anger and deep division.

Those who had not picked up on the frequently expressed fears of the Jewish community are now highly attuned. Just as, they are sensitive to reconciling the need for a much more immediate, energetic government and institutional crackdown against anti-Jewish hatred with the freedom 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 sorely depleted. This is particularly so for those of us lucky never to have experienced the hatred and dread of religious and ethnic persecution on this land or elsewhere.

And yet the algorithms keep spewing at us the trite hot takes of those with blistering, polarizing stances but little understanding at all of that terrifying fragility.

This is a time when I regret not having a stronger spiritual belief. I lament, because believing in humanity – in mankind’s capacity for compassion – has let us down so acutely. A different source, a greater power, is required.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have witnessed such profound examples of human decency. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The selflessness of bystanders. Emergency personnel – police officers and paramedics, those who charged into the danger to aid others, some recognised but for the most part anonymous and unsung.

When the barrier cordon still waved in the wind all about Bondi, the necessity of community, religious and cultural solidarity was laudably promoted by religious figures. It was a message of compassion and tolerance – of unifying rather than splitting apart in a time of antisemitic slaughter.

In keeping with the symbolism of the Festival of Lights (illumination amid darkness), there was so much fitting evocation of the need for hope.

Togetherness, light and love was the essence of belief.

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

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

Some politicians moved straight for the pessimism, using tragedy as a cynical opportunity to question Australia’s migration rules.

Observe the dangerous rhetoric of disunity from longstanding fomenters of societal discord, capitalizing on the massacre before the site was even cold. Then consider the words of political figures while the investigation was ongoing.

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

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was judged as probable, did such a significant public Hanukah event go ahead with such a woefully insufficient security presence? Like how could the accused attackers have six guns in the family home when the security agency has so openly and repeatedly warned of the threat of antisemitic violence?

How rapidly we were treated to that tired argument (or versions of it) that it’s individuals not weapons that kill. Naturally, each point are true. It’s feasible to simultaneously pursue new ways to stop hate-fuelled violence and prevent firearms away from its possible actors.

In this metropolis of profound splendor, of clear azure skies above ocean and shore, the water and the coastline – our communal areas – may not look quite the same again to the multitude who’ve noted that iconic Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s obscene bloodshed.

We long right now for understanding and meaning, for loved ones, and perhaps for the consolation of beauty in art or nature.

This weekend many Australians are calling off holiday gathering plans. Quiet contemplation will seem more appropriate.

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

The comfort 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 cohesion in politics and the community will be elusive this long, draining summer.