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While Australia winds down for a customary Christmas holiday during slow-moving days of beach and scorching heat set to the background of Test cricket and insect sounds, this year the country’s summer atmosphere feels, unfortunately, like no other.

It would be a dramatic oversimplification to characterize the national disposition after the antisemitic violent assault on Jewish Australians during Bondi Hanukah festivities as one of mere ennui.

Throughout the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of Australian cities – a tenor of initial surprise, grief and horror is segueing to anger and deep division.

Those who had previously missed the frequently expressed fears of Australian Jews are now acutely aware. Similarly, they are sensitive to reconciling the need for a far more urgent, energetic government and institutional fight against anti-Jewish hatred with the freedom 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 sorely depleted. This is especially so for those of us fortunate enough never to have endured the animosity and fear of faith-based targeting on this land or anywhere else.

And yet the algorithms keep churning out at us the banal instant opinions of those with blistering, polarizing stances but no sense at all of that terrifying vulnerability.

This is a time when I regret not having a stronger faith. I mourn, because believing in humanity – in mankind’s potential for compassion – has let us down so painfully. Something else, something higher, is needed.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have seen such extreme examples of human decency. The heroism of individuals. The selflessness of bystanders. Emergency personnel – law enforcement and paramedics, those who ran towards the gunfire to help fellow humans, some publicly hailed but for the most part unnamed and unheralded.

When the barrier cordon still fluttered wildly all about Bondi, the necessity of social, faith-based and cultural solidarity was laudably championed by faith leaders. It was a call of compassion and acceptance – of bringing together rather than dividing in a moment of antisemitic slaughter.

Consistent with the meaning of Hanukah (illumination amid gloom), there was so much fitting evocation of the need for hope.

Unity, light and compassion was the essence of faith.

‘Our shared community spaces may not look quite the same again.’

And yet elements of the political landscape responded so disgustingly quickly with division, finger-pointing and accusation.

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

Observe the harmful rhetoric of division from longstanding agitators of societal discord, capitalizing on the massacre before the crime scene was even cold. Then consider the statements of leadership aspirants while the probe was still active.

Government has a formidable task to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is mourning and scared and looking for the light and, importantly, answers 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 family home when the domestic intelligence organisation has so openly and consistently alerted of the danger of targeted attacks?

How rapidly we were subjected to that tired line (or iterations of it) that it’s people not guns that cause death. Naturally, each point are valid. It’s possible to simultaneously pursue new ways to stop hate-fuelled violence and keep guns away from its potential perpetrators.

In this city of profound splendor, of pristine blue heavens above sea and sand, the ocean and the beaches – our communal areas – may not look quite the same again to the many who’ve observed that famous Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s obscene bloodshed.

We yearn right now for comprehension and meaning, for loved ones, and perhaps for the consolation of beauty in culture or nature.

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 days of fear, outrage, sadness, bewilderment and grief we need each other more than ever.

The reassurance of community – the binding force of the unity in the very word – is what we probably 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.