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As the nation settles into for a customary Christmas holiday during slow-moving days of beach and scorching heat accompanied by the background of sporting matches and cicada song, this year the nation's summer atmosphere feels, unfortunately, like none before.

It would be a dramatic oversimplification to describe the collective disposition after the anti-Jewish violent assault on Jewish Australians during Bondi Hanukah festivities as one of simple ennui.

Across the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of Australian cities – a tone of immediate shock, grief and horror is shifting to fury and deep division.

Those who had previously missed the often voiced concerns of the Jewish community are now acutely aware. Similarly, they are attuned to balancing the need for a much more immediate, vigorous official fight against anti-Jewish hatred with the right to peacefully protest against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a time 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 persecution on this land or elsewhere.

And yet the algorithms keep churning out at us the banal hot takes of those with blistering, divisive stances but little understanding at all of that profound fragility.

This is a period when I lament not having a greater faith. I mourn, because believing in people – in mankind’s capacity for kindness – has let us down so painfully. Something else, something higher, is required.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have witnessed such profound examples of human goodness. The heroism of individuals. The bravery of those present. Emergency personnel – law enforcement and paramedics, those who ran towards the gunfire to aid fellow humans, some recognised but for the most part anonymous and unheralded.

When the barrier cordon still waved in the wind all about Bondi, the imperative of social, faith-based and ethnic solidarity was admirably championed by religious figures. It was a message of compassion and tolerance – of bringing together rather than dividing in a moment of targeted violence.

In keeping with the meaning of the Festival of Lights (illumination amid darkness), there was so much fitting reference of the need for lightness.

Unity, hope 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 nauseatingly swiftly with division, finger-pointing and accusation.

Some politicians gravitated straight for the darkness, using the atrocity as a cynical chance to question Australia’s immigration policies.

Observe the dangerous message of division from longstanding agitators of Australian racial division, capitalizing on the massacre before the site was even cold. Then read the words of leadership aspirants while the probe was ongoing.

Politics has a daunting job to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is mourning and scared and looking for the light and, importantly, explanations to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the official terror alert was assessed as likely, did such a significant open-air Hanukah event go ahead with such a grossly inadequate protection? Like how could the accused attackers have six guns in the residence when the security agency has so publicly and consistently warned of the danger of antisemitic violence?

How rapidly we were treated to that tired argument (or iterations of it) that it’s people not weapons that kill. Of course, both things are valid. It’s possible to at the same time seek new ways to stop violent bigotry and keep guns away from its potential perpetrators.

In this metropolis of profound splendor, of pristine blue heavens above sea and shore, the ocean and the coastline – our communal areas – may not seem entirely familiar again to the many who’ve noted that iconic Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s horrific 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. Quiet contemplation will feel more appropriate.

But this is perhaps somewhat counterintuitive. For in these times of fear, anger, melancholy, confusion and loss we require each other more than ever.

The comfort of community – the binding force of the unity in the very word – is what we likely need most.

But sadly, all of the indicators are that cohesion in politics and the community will be elusive this long, enervating summer.