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As the nation winds down for a customary Christmas holiday across languorous days of coast and scorching heat set to the background of Test cricket and insect sounds, this year the nation's summer atmosphere seems, unfortunately, like none before.

It would be a significant understatement to describe the collective temperament after the anti-Jewish terrorist attack on Australian Jews during the beachside Hanukah celebrations as one of mere ennui.

Throughout the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of Australian cities – a tone of immediate shock, grief and horror is shifting to anger and bitter division.

Those who had not picked up on the often voiced fears of Australian Jews are now highly attuned. Similarly, they are attuned to balancing the need for a much more immediate, vigorous official fight against antisemitism with the freedom to peacefully protest against genocide.

If ever there was a moment for a national listening, it is now, when our faith in humanity is so sorely depleted. This is particularly so for those of us fortunate enough never to have endured the animosity and fear of religious and ethnic targeting on this land or elsewhere.

And yet the algorithms keep churning out at us the trite hot takes of those with blistering, divisive views but no sense at all of that profound fragility.

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

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have witnessed such profound examples of human decency. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The bravery of those present. Emergency personnel – police officers and medical staff, those who ran towards the danger to aid fellow humans, some recognised but for the most part unnamed and unsung.

When the barrier cordon still waved wildly all about Bondi, the necessity of social, faith-based and ethnic solidarity was laudably championed by religious figures. It was a message of love and tolerance – of bringing together rather than splitting apart in a moment of antisemitic slaughter.

In keeping with the meaning of the Festival of Lights (light amid darkness), there was so much fitting reference of the need for lightness.

Togetherness, hope and love was the message of belief.

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

And yet segments of the political landscape reacted so disgustingly quickly with fragmentation, blame and recrimination.

Some politicians gravitated straight for the pessimism, using tragedy as a calculating opportunity to challenge Australia’s migration rules.

Observe the dangerous message of division from longstanding fomenters of Australian racial division, exploiting the massacre before the site was even cold. Then read the statements of leadership aspirants while the probe was ongoing.

Government has a daunting job to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is grieving and frightened and seeking the light and, not least, answers to so many questions.

Like why, when the official terror alert was assessed as likely, did such a significant public Hanukah event go ahead with such a woefully inadequate security presence? Like how could the alleged killers have six guns in the family home when the security agency has so publicly and consistently alerted of the danger of targeted attacks?

How quickly we were treated to that tired argument (or iterations of it) that it’s people not guns that cause death. Of course, both things are true. It’s feasible to simultaneously pursue new ways to stop violent bigotry and keep firearms away from its possible perpetrators.

In this metropolis of profound beauty, of pristine blue heavens above ocean and sand, the water and the beaches – our shared community spaces – may not look entirely familiar again to the many who’ve observed that famous Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s horrific bloodshed.

We long right now for understanding and significance, for family, and perhaps for the solace 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 somewhat counterintuitive. For in these times of anxiety, outrage, 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 likely need most.

But tragically, all of the indicators are that cohesion in politics and society will be elusive this extended, enervating summer.