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As Australia winds down for a traditional Christmas holiday across slow-moving days of coast and blistering heat accompanied by the soundtrack of sporting matches and insect sounds, this year the nation's summer mood feels, unfortunately, like none before.

It would be a significant oversimplification to characterize the collective disposition after the antisemitic violent assault on Australian Jews during the beachside Hanukah festivities as one of mere discontent.

Across the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of the nation's urban centers – a tone of immediate shock, grief and horror is segueing to fury and bitter polarization.

Those who had not picked up on the frequently expressed concerns of the Jewish community are now acutely aware. Similarly, they are attuned to reconciling the need for a much more immediate, vigorous official crackdown 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 diminished. This is particularly so for those of us lucky never to have endured the hatred and fear of faith-based persecution on this land or elsewhere.

And yet the algorithms keep spewing at us the banal instant opinions of those with blistering, polarizing stances but no sense 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 kindness – has failed us so painfully. A different source, something higher, is needed.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have witnessed such extreme examples of human goodness. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The selflessness of bystanders. First responders – police officers and paramedics, those who charged into the danger to help fellow humans, some publicly hailed but for the most part anonymous and unsung.

When the police tape still fluttered in the wind all about Bondi, the necessity of community, faith-based and ethnic unity was laudably promoted by faith leaders. It was a message of love and tolerance – of unifying rather than dividing in a moment of targeted violence.

Consistent with the symbolism of Hanukah (light amid darkness), there was so much fitting reference of the need for hope.

Togetherness, hope and love was the essence of belief.

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

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

Some elected officials gravitated straight for the pessimism, using the atrocity as a calculating opportunity to question Australia’s migration rules.

Witness the dangerous message of division from longstanding agitators of societal discord, exploiting the massacre before the crime scene was even cold. Then consider the words of leadership aspirants while the investigation was ongoing.

Politics has a daunting job to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is grieving and frightened and seeking the hope and, not least, answers to so many questions.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was assessed as probable, did such a significant open-air Hanukah event go ahead with such a woefully insufficient security presence? Like how could the alleged killers have six guns in the family home when the security agency has so publicly and repeatedly alerted of the danger of targeted attacks?

How rapidly we were treated to that cliched line (or iterations of it) that it’s individuals not weapons that kill. Of course, each point are true. It’s possible to at the same time seek new ways to stop violent bigotry and keep firearms away from its possible perpetrators.

In this city of profound beauty, of pristine blue heavens above sea and sand, the ocean and the beaches – our shared community spaces – may not seem quite the same again to the multitude who’ve observed that famous Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s horrific bloodshed.

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

This weekend many Australians are cancelling holiday gathering plans. Quiet contemplation will seem more in order.

But this is perhaps somewhat counterintuitive. For in these times of anxiety, anger, melancholy, confusion 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 portents are that unity in politics and the community will be hard to find this extended, enervating summer.