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While Australia settles into for a traditional Christmas holiday across slow-moving days of coast and scorching heat set to the soundtrack of sporting matches and cicada song, this year the nation's summer mood seems, unfortunately, like no other.

It would be a dramatic understatement to characterize the collective disposition after the anti-Jewish violent assault on Australian Jews during the beachside Hanukah celebrations as one of mere discontent.

Across the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of Australian cities – a tone of immediate surprise, grief and horror is shifting to anger and bitter polarization.

Those who had not picked up on the often voiced 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 freedom to demonstrate against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a time for a national listening, it is now, when our belief in mankind is so deeply depleted. This is especially so for those of us lucky never to have experienced the animosity and dread of religious and ethnic targeting on this continent or elsewhere.

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

This is a time when I regret not having a stronger spiritual belief. I mourn, because having faith in people – in mankind’s capacity for compassion – has failed us so painfully. Something else, something higher, is needed.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have seen such extreme examples of human decency. The heroism of individuals. The bravery of those present. Emergency personnel – police officers and medical staff, those who ran towards the danger to help others, some recognised but for the most part unnamed and unheralded.

When the barrier cordon still waved wildly all about Bondi, the necessity of community, religious and ethnic solidarity was admirably championed by faith leaders. It was a call of compassion and acceptance – of bringing together rather than splitting apart in a moment of targeted violence.

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

Unity, hope and love was the message of faith.

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

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

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

Witness the harmful message of disunity from longstanding fomenters of Australian racial division, capitalizing on the massacre before the site was even cold. Then consider the statements of political figures while the investigation was still active.

Government has a formidable task to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is grieving and frightened and seeking the hope and, not least, explanations to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the official terror alert was assessed as likely, did such a large public Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a woefully inadequate protection? Like how could the accused attackers have six guns in the family home when the domestic intelligence organisation has so publicly and consistently warned of the danger of targeted attacks?

How rapidly we were subjected to that tired line (or versions 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 guns away from its potential perpetrators.

In this city of profound beauty, of clear blue heavens above ocean and sand, the ocean and the coastline – our communal areas – may not seem entirely familiar again to the multitude who’ve noted that famous Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s obscene bloodshed.

We yearn right now for comprehension and meaning, for loved ones, and perhaps for the solace of aesthetics in culture or the natural world.

This weekend many Australians are cancelling holiday gathering plans. Quiet contemplation will feel more appropriate.

But this is perhaps somewhat counterintuitive. For in these times of fear, anger, sadness, confusion and loss we require each other now more than ever.

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

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