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As the nation settles into for a traditional Christmas holiday across slow-moving days of beach and blistering heat set to the background of Test cricket and insect sounds, this year the country’s summer mood seems, unfortunately, like none before.

It would be a significant oversimplification to describe the collective temperament after the anti-Jewish violent assault on Australian Jews during Bondi Hanukah festivities as one of simple ennui.

Throughout the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of Australian cities – a tenor of immediate shock, sorrow and horror is shifting to fury and deep division.

Those who had previously missed the frequently expressed concerns of the Jewish community are now highly attuned. Just as, they are attuned to balancing the need for a far more urgent, energetic official crackdown against antisemitism with the freedom to peacefully protest against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a time for a countrywide dialogue, it is now, when our faith in humanity is so deeply diminished. This is particularly so for those of us fortunate enough never to have endured the animosity and dread of faith-based persecution on this continent or elsewhere.

And yet the algorithms keep spewing at us the trite hot takes of those with inflammatory, polarizing views but no sense at all of that profound fragility.

This is a time when I lament not having a greater spiritual belief. I lament, 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 seen such extreme examples of human goodness. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The bravery of those present. First responders – police officers and paramedics, those who ran towards the danger to help fellow humans, some recognised but for the most part anonymous and unsung.

When the police tape still fluttered in the wind all about Bondi, the necessity of community, religious and ethnic unity was laudably promoted by religious figures. It was a call of compassion and acceptance – of bringing together rather than dividing in a time of targeted violence.

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

Togetherness, hope and love was the essence of faith.

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

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

Some elected officials gravitated straight for the pessimism, using tragedy as a cynical chance to question Australia’s migration rules.

Witness the dangerous message of division from longstanding fomenters of societal discord, capitalizing on the attack before the site was even cold. Then read the words of political figures while the investigation was still active.

Politics has a daunting task to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is grieving and frightened and looking for the hope and, importantly, answers to so many questions.

Like why, when the official terror alert was assessed as likely, did such a large open-air Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a grossly insufficient security presence? Like how could the accused attackers have multiple firearms in the family home when the domestic intelligence organisation has so openly and repeatedly alerted of the danger of antisemitic violence?

How rapidly we were treated to that tired argument (or versions of it) that it’s people not guns that kill. Naturally, each point are true. It’s feasible to simultaneously pursue new ways to prevent violent bigotry and prevent firearms away from its possible perpetrators.

In this metropolis of immense splendor, of clear blue heavens above ocean and shore, the water and the coastline – our shared community spaces – may not seem entirely familiar again to the multitude who’ve observed that famous Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s horrific violence.

We yearn right now for comprehension and meaning, for family, and perhaps for the solace of beauty in culture or the natural world.

This weekend many Australians are cancelling Christmas party plans. Quiet contemplation will seem more appropriate.

But this is perhaps counterintuitively against instinct. For in these days of fear, outrage, melancholy, bewilderment and grief we need each other more than ever.

The reassurance 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 cohesion in public life and the community will be elusive this extended, draining summer.