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While Australia settles into for a customary Christmas holiday across languorous days of beach and scorching heat accompanied by the soundtrack of sporting matches and cicada song, this year the nation's summer atmosphere seems, sadly, like none before.

It would be a dramatic oversimplification to describe the national disposition after the anti-Jewish terrorist attack on Australian Jews during Bondi Hanukah celebrations as one of mere discontent.

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

Those who had not picked up on the frequently expressed fears of the Jewish community are now acutely aware. Similarly, they are sensitive to balancing the need for a much more immediate, vigorous government and institutional fight against anti-Jewish hatred with the right to demonstrate against genocide.

If ever there was a time for a national listening, it is now, when our belief in mankind is so sorely depleted. This is particularly so for those of us lucky never to have endured the hatred and dread of religious and ethnic persecution on this continent or anywhere else.

And yet the social media feeds keep churning out at us the banal instant opinions of those with blistering, polarizing stances but no sense at all of that profound fragility.

This is a time when I regret not having a greater spiritual belief. I lament, because believing in humanity – in mankind’s potential for compassion – has let us down so painfully. A different source, a greater power, is needed.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have witnessed such profound examples of human goodness. The heroism of individuals. The selflessness of bystanders. Emergency personnel – law enforcement and medical staff, those who charged into the danger to aid fellow humans, some publicly hailed but for the most part anonymous and unsung.

When the barrier cordon still waved wildly all about Bondi, the imperative of social, religious and ethnic unity was laudably championed by religious figures. It was a call of compassion and acceptance – of unifying rather than dividing in a time of targeted violence.

Consistent with the symbolism of Hanukah (illumination amid darkness), there was so much fitting evocation of the need for lightness.

Togetherness, light and love was the message of faith.

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

And yet elements of the Australian polity responded so nauseatingly swiftly with fragmentation, finger-pointing and accusation.

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

Observe the harmful rhetoric of disunity from veteran agitators of societal discord, capitalizing on the attack before the crime scene was even cold. Then consider the statements of leadership aspirants while the probe was ongoing.

Government has a daunting task 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 national terrorism threat level was assessed as probable, did such a large public Hanukah event go ahead with such a woefully inadequate security presence? Like how could the alleged killers have six guns in the residence when the domestic intelligence organisation has so openly and repeatedly alerted of the threat of targeted attacks?

How quickly we were subjected to that cliched line (or versions of it) that it’s people not guns that cause death. Of course, both things are valid. It’s possible to at the same time seek new ways to stop hate-fuelled violence and keep firearms away from its possible actors.

In this metropolis of immense splendor, of pristine blue heavens above ocean and sand, the ocean and the beaches – our shared community spaces – may not seem entirely familiar again to the many who’ve noted that famous Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s horrific violence.

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

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

But this is perhaps counterintuitively against instinct. For in these times of anxiety, outrage, sadness, bewilderment and loss we require each other more than ever.

The reassurance 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 public life and the community will be hard to find this extended, draining summer.