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While the nation winds down for a traditional Christmas holiday during languorous days of coast and blistering heat set to the soundtrack of sporting matches and cicada song, this year the nation's summer mood feels, unfortunately, like no other.

It would be a significant oversimplification to characterize the national temperament after the anti-Jewish terrorist attack on Australian Jews during the beachside Hanukah festivities as one of simple discontent.

Across the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of Australian cities – a tone of initial surprise, sorrow and terror is segueing to anger and deep polarization.

Those who had previously missed the often voiced concerns of Australian Jews are now acutely aware. Just as, they are sensitive to reconciling the need for a much more immediate, vigorous official 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 mankind is so deeply depleted. This is especially so for those of us fortunate enough never to have endured the hatred and fear of religious and ethnic targeting on this land or elsewhere.

And yet the social media feeds keep spewing at us the trite 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 greater faith. I lament, because believing in people – in our potential for kindness – has let us down so painfully. Something else, a greater power, is needed.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have seen such extreme examples of human goodness. The heroism of individuals. The selflessness of bystanders. Emergency personnel – police officers and medical staff, those who ran towards the gunfire to aid others, some recognised but for the most part unnamed and unheralded.

When the barrier cordon still fluttered wildly all about Bondi, the necessity of community, faith-based and ethnic solidarity was admirably championed by religious figures. It was a message of love and tolerance – of unifying rather than dividing in a moment of targeted violence.

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

Unity, hope and compassion was the message of faith.

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

And yet segments of the Australian polity responded so disgustingly swiftly with fragmentation, finger-pointing and recrimination.

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

Witness the dangerous message of disunity from longstanding fomenters of societal discord, capitalizing on the massacre before the crime scene was even cold. Then read the statements of leadership aspirants while the investigation was still active.

Government has a daunting task to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is grieving and scared and looking for the hope and, not least, explanations to so many questions.

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 family home when the security agency has so publicly and repeatedly warned of the danger of targeted attacks?

How rapidly we were treated to that cliched line (or iterations of it) that it’s people not weapons that kill. Of course, each point are valid. It’s possible to at the same time seek new ways to prevent hate-fuelled violence and keep guns away from its potential perpetrators.

In this metropolis of immense splendor, of clear blue heavens above ocean and sand, the water and the beaches – our shared community spaces – may not seem quite the same again to the multitude who’ve observed that iconic 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 consolation of aesthetics 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 counterintuitively counterintuitive. For in these times of anxiety, anger, melancholy, bewilderment and grief we need each other now more than ever.

The comfort 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 elusive this long, enervating summer.