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As Australia settles into for a customary Christmas holiday across languorous days of beach and blistering heat set to the background of sporting matches and cicada song, this year the nation's summer atmosphere seems, unfortunately, like no other.

It would be a dramatic oversimplification to characterize the collective temperament after the antisemitic violent assault on Jewish Australians during the beachside Hanukah festivities as one of simple discontent.

Throughout the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of Australian cities – a tenor of initial shock, sorrow and horror is shifting to anger and deep division.

Those who had previously missed the frequently expressed concerns of Australian Jews are now highly attuned. Similarly, they are attuned to reconciling the need for a far more urgent, vigorous 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 mankind is so sorely 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 land or elsewhere.

And yet the social media feeds keep spewing at us the trite hot takes of those with blistering, polarizing stances but little understanding at all of that profound fragility.

This is a period when I regret not having a greater spiritual belief. I lament, because believing in people – in mankind’s potential for kindness – has failed us so acutely. Something else, something higher, is required.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have seen such extreme instances of human decency. The heroism of individuals. The selflessness of bystanders. First responders – law enforcement and medical staff, those who charged into the gunfire to help fellow humans, some recognised but for the most part anonymous and unheralded.

When the barrier cordon still fluttered in the wind all about Bondi, the imperative of community, faith-based and ethnic unity was admirably championed by religious figures. It was a call of love and tolerance – of bringing together rather than splitting apart in a time of antisemitic slaughter.

Consistent with the meaning of Hanukah (illumination amid darkness), there was so much appropriate reference of the need for lightness.

Unity, light and compassion was the message of belief.

‘Our public places may not look quite the same again.’

And yet elements of the Australian polity reacted so nauseatingly swiftly with fragmentation, blame and accusation.

Some elected officials moved straight for the darkness, using tragedy as a calculating opportunity to question Australia’s immigration policies.

Witness the dangerous message of division from longstanding fomenters of Australian racial division, capitalizing on the massacre before the crime scene was even cold. Then read the statements 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 questions.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was judged as likely, did such a significant public Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a woefully inadequate protection? Like how could the accused attackers have six guns in the residence when the domestic intelligence organisation has so openly and consistently alerted of the threat of antisemitic violence?

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

In this city of immense beauty, of pristine blue heavens above ocean and shore, the ocean and the coastline – 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 obscene bloodshed.

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

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

But this is perhaps somewhat against instinct. For in these days of fear, outrage, melancholy, confusion and grief we need each other 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 unity in politics and society will be hard to find this long, enervating summer.