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While the nation settles into for a traditional Christmas holiday across slow-moving days of beach and blistering heat set to the background of Test cricket and cicada song, this year the country’s summer mood feels, sadly, like none before.

It would be a dramatic understatement to describe the national temperament after the anti-Jewish terrorist attack on Australian Jews during Bondi Hanukah festivities as one of mere ennui.

Across the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of the nation's urban centers – a tone of initial surprise, grief and horror is segueing to anger and deep polarization.

Those who had previously missed the often voiced concerns of the Jewish community are now acutely aware. Similarly, they are sensitive to reconciling the need for a much more immediate, energetic government and institutional fight against antisemitism with the right to demonstrate against genocide.

If ever there was a moment for a national listening, it is now, when our belief in humanity is so deeply depleted. This is particularly so for those of us fortunate enough never to have experienced the animosity and dread of faith-based targeting on this continent or elsewhere.

And yet the algorithms keep spewing at us the banal instant opinions of those with blistering, divisive stances but little understanding at all of that terrifying vulnerability.

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

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have seen such profound examples of human goodness. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The bravery of those present. First responders – police officers and medical staff, those who ran towards the danger to help fellow humans, some publicly hailed but for the most part unnamed and unheralded.

When the police tape still waved in the wind all about Bondi, the necessity of community, religious and ethnic solidarity was laudably promoted by religious figures. It was a call of love and acceptance – of bringing together rather than dividing in a time of targeted violence.

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 essence of belief.

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

And yet segments of the political landscape responded so nauseatingly quickly with fragmentation, finger-pointing and accusation.

Some politicians moved straight for the darkness, using tragedy as a calculating chance to challenge Australia’s migration rules.

Witness the harmful rhetoric of disunity from veteran agitators of societal discord, capitalizing on the massacre before the site was even cold. Then read the words of political figures while the probe was ongoing.

Politics has a daunting task to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is grieving and scared and looking for the light and, not least, answers to so many questions.

Like why, when the official terror alert was judged as likely, did such a large public Hanukah event go ahead with such a grossly insufficient security presence? Like how could the accused attackers have multiple firearms in the family home when the security agency has so publicly and consistently warned of the threat of antisemitic violence?

How quickly we were treated to that cliched argument (or iterations of it) that it’s individuals not guns that kill. Naturally, both things are true. It’s possible to simultaneously pursue new ways to stop violent bigotry and keep guns away from its potential perpetrators.

In this city of immense splendor, of clear blue heavens above sea and shore, the ocean and the coastline – our communal areas – may not look entirely familiar again to the many who’ve observed that iconic Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s obscene bloodshed.

We yearn right now for understanding and significance, for loved ones, and perhaps for the consolation of aesthetics in art or the natural world.

This weekend many Australians are cancelling Christmas party plans. Quiet contemplation will feel more appropriate.

But this is perhaps somewhat counterintuitive. For in these times of anxiety, anger, sadness, bewilderment and grief we need each other 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 portents are that unity in politics and the community will be elusive this extended, draining summer.