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While the nation winds down for a customary Christmas holiday across languorous days of beach and blistering heat accompanied by the background of sporting matches and insect sounds, this year the nation's summer mood feels, unfortunately, like no other.

It would be a significant oversimplification to characterize the collective temperament after the anti-Jewish violent assault on Jewish Australians during the beachside Hanukah festivities as one of mere discontent.

Throughout the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of Australian cities – a tone of initial surprise, grief and terror is segueing to fury and deep polarization.

Those who had previously missed the frequently expressed concerns of Australian Jews are now acutely aware. Similarly, they are sensitive to reconciling the need for a much more immediate, vigorous government and institutional crackdown against anti-Jewish hatred with the freedom to peacefully protest against genocide.

If ever there was a time for a national listening, it is now, when our faith in humanity is so sorely depleted. This is especially so for those of us lucky never to have endured the hatred and dread of religious and ethnic persecution 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 no sense at all of that terrifying vulnerability.

This is a period when I lament not having a greater faith. I mourn, because believing in humanity – in our capacity for compassion – has let us down so acutely. Something else, a greater power, is needed.

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

When the police tape still waved in the wind all about Bondi, the necessity of social, religious and ethnic solidarity was laudably championed by faith leaders. It was a call of love and tolerance – of unifying rather than dividing in a time of targeted violence.

Consistent with the symbolism of the Festival of Lights (light amid gloom), there was so much fitting evocation of the need for hope.

Unity, light and compassion was the message of faith.

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

And yet segments of the political landscape responded so disgustingly swiftly with division, blame and recrimination.

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

Witness the harmful rhetoric of division from longstanding agitators of societal discord, capitalizing on the massacre before the crime scene was even cold. Then consider the words of leadership aspirants while the probe was ongoing.

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

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was assessed as probable, 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 repeatedly alerted of the threat of targeted attacks?

How rapidly we were subjected to that cliched line (or iterations of it) that it’s individuals not guns that cause death. Naturally, both things are true. It’s possible to simultaneously seek new ways to stop hate-fuelled violence and keep firearms away from its possible perpetrators.

In this metropolis of profound beauty, of clear blue heavens above sea and sand, the water and the beaches – our communal areas – may not look entirely familiar again to the multitude who’ve observed that famous Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s obscene violence.

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

This weekend many Australians are cancelling Christmas party plans. Reflective solitude will seem more appropriate.

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

The reassurance of togetherness – the binding force of the unity in the very word – is what we probably need most.

But sadly, all of the indicators are that unity in politics and society will be hard to find this extended, draining summer.