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As Australia winds down for a traditional Christmas holiday across languorous days of beach and scorching heat accompanied by the soundtrack of sporting matches and insect sounds, this year the country’s summer mood seems, sadly, like no other.

It would be a significant understatement to characterize the national disposition after the antisemitic violent assault on Jewish Australians during the beachside Hanukah celebrations as one of mere ennui.

Throughout the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of Australian cities – a tenor of initial surprise, grief and horror is shifting 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 official fight against anti-Jewish hatred with the right to peacefully protest against genocide.

If ever there was a time for a national listening, it is now, when our belief in mankind is so deeply diminished. This is particularly so for those of us fortunate enough never to have endured the hatred and dread of faith-based persecution on this land or anywhere else.

And yet the social media feeds keep spewing at us the banal hot takes of those with inflammatory, divisive views but no sense at all of that profound vulnerability.

This is a period when I lament not having a stronger faith. I mourn, because believing in humanity – in our potential for kindness – has let us down so painfully. Something else, something higher, is required.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have witnessed such extreme instances of human goodness. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The selflessness of bystanders. First responders – law enforcement and medical staff, those who ran towards the gunfire to aid others, some publicly hailed but for the most part anonymous and unheralded.

When the barrier cordon still fluttered in the wind all about Bondi, the necessity of community, religious and cultural solidarity was laudably championed by religious figures. It was a message of love and tolerance – 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 evocation of the need for hope.

Unity, hope and compassion was the essence of faith.

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

And yet elements of the Australian polity responded so disgustingly quickly with fragmentation, blame and recrimination.

Some politicians moved straight for the pessimism, using tragedy as a calculating chance to challenge Australia’s immigration policies.

Witness the harmful rhetoric of division from longstanding agitators of Australian racial division, capitalizing on the attack before the crime scene was even cold. Then consider the statements of political figures while the probe was ongoing.

Politics has a formidable task to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is grieving and scared and seeking the light and, importantly, answers to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was judged as probable, did such a significant public Hanukah event go ahead with such a woefully insufficient protection? Like how could the alleged killers have six guns in the family home when the domestic intelligence organisation has so openly 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 individuals not guns that kill. Of course, each point are true. It’s possible to simultaneously pursue new ways to prevent violent bigotry and keep guns away from its possible actors.

In this city of profound beauty, of pristine azure skies above ocean and shore, the water and the beaches – our shared community spaces – may not seem quite the same again to the many who’ve observed that famous Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s horrific bloodshed.

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

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

But this is perhaps counterintuitively counterintuitive. For in these days of fear, outrage, sadness, confusion and loss we require each other now more than ever.

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

But tragically, all of the portents are that cohesion in public life and the community will be hard to find this long, enervating summer.