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As the nation winds down for a customary Christmas holiday during languorous days of coast and scorching heat set to the soundtrack of Test cricket and insect sounds, this year the country’s summer atmosphere seems, sadly, like none before.

It would be a significant understatement to characterize the national disposition after the antisemitic terrorist attack on Australian Jews during Bondi Hanukah festivities as one of simple ennui.

Throughout the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of the nation's urban centers – a tenor of initial shock, sorrow and horror is shifting to fury and deep division.

Those who had not picked up on the frequently expressed concerns of the Jewish community are now highly attuned. Just as, they are sensitive to balancing the need for a much more immediate, energetic official fight against antisemitism 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 deeply depleted. This is particularly so for those of us lucky never to have endured the hatred and dread of religious and ethnic targeting on this land or elsewhere.

And yet the social media feeds keep spewing at us the banal hot takes of those with blistering, polarizing stances but no sense 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 our capacity for compassion – has let us down so acutely. Something else, something higher, is needed.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have seen such profound examples of human goodness. The heroism of individuals. The selflessness of bystanders. First responders – police officers and medical staff, those who ran towards the gunfire to help others, some recognised but for the most part anonymous and unheralded.

When the police tape still fluttered in the wind all about Bondi, the necessity of social, religious and ethnic unity was laudably promoted by religious figures. It was a message of compassion and tolerance – of bringing together rather than splitting apart in a time of antisemitic slaughter.

In keeping with the symbolism of the Festival of Lights (illumination amid gloom), there was so much appropriate evocation of the need for hope.

Togetherness, hope and compassion was the essence of belief.

‘Our shared community spaces may not look exactly as they did again.’

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

Some politicians moved straight for the darkness, using tragedy as a cynical opportunity to question Australia’s migration rules.

Observe the harmful rhetoric of disunity from longstanding fomenters of Australian racial division, exploiting the massacre before the site was even cold. Then read the statements of political figures while the investigation was still active.

Politics has a formidable job to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is mourning and frightened and looking for the hope and, importantly, explanations to so many questions.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level 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 multiple firearms in the residence when the domestic intelligence organisation has so publicly and consistently alerted of the danger of targeted attacks?

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

In this city of profound splendor, of clear blue heavens above sea and shore, the ocean and the beaches – 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 obscene bloodshed.

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

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

But this is perhaps counterintuitively counterintuitive. For in these days of anxiety, anger, melancholy, bewilderment and loss we need each other 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 public life and the community will be elusive this long, enervating summer.