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As the nation settles into for a customary Christmas holiday across languorous days of coast and blistering heat set to the background of sporting matches and insect sounds, this year the country’s summer atmosphere seems, unfortunately, like no other.

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

Throughout the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of Australian cities – a tone of immediate shock, sorrow and terror is shifting to fury and bitter division.

Those who had previously missed the frequently expressed fears of Australian Jews are now highly attuned. Similarly, they are attuned to reconciling the need for a far more urgent, energetic government and institutional crackdown against antisemitism with the freedom to peacefully protest against genocide.

If ever there was a moment for a countrywide dialogue, it is now, when our faith in humanity is so sorely diminished. This is especially so for those of us lucky never to have experienced the animosity and fear of religious and ethnic targeting on this continent or elsewhere.

And yet the algorithms keep churning out at us the banal hot takes of those with inflammatory, divisive views but no sense at all of that profound fragility.

This is a period when I lament not having a greater faith. I lament, because having faith in humanity – in our capacity for kindness – has failed us so painfully. A different source, a greater power, is required.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have seen such extreme examples 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 help fellow humans, some publicly hailed but for the most part unnamed and unheralded.

When the police tape still fluttered wildly all about Bondi, the necessity of community, religious and ethnic solidarity was admirably promoted by faith leaders. It was a message of compassion and tolerance – of unifying rather than dividing in a moment of antisemitic slaughter.

In keeping with the symbolism of Hanukah (light amid gloom), there was so much appropriate reference of the need for hope.

Unity, light and love was the essence of faith.

‘Our public places may not look exactly as they did again.’

And yet segments of the political landscape responded so nauseatingly swiftly with fragmentation, blame and accusation.

Some politicians gravitated straight for the pessimism, using tragedy as a cynical opportunity to challenge Australia’s immigration policies.

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

Government has a daunting job to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is mourning and scared and looking for the light and, not least, answers to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was judged as probable, did such a large public Hanukah event go ahead with such a woefully insufficient protection? Like how could the alleged killers have six guns in the residence when the domestic intelligence organisation has so openly and repeatedly warned of the danger of targeted attacks?

How rapidly we were subjected to that tired argument (or iterations of it) that it’s individuals not weapons that cause death. Naturally, both things are true. It’s feasible to simultaneously pursue new ways to stop violent bigotry and keep guns away from its potential actors.

In this city of profound beauty, of pristine blue heavens above ocean and shore, the ocean and the coastline – our shared community spaces – may not look entirely familiar again to the multitude who’ve observed that iconic Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s horrific violence.

We yearn right now for understanding and meaning, for loved ones, and perhaps for the solace of aesthetics in culture or nature.

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

But this is perhaps somewhat against instinct. For in these times of anxiety, outrage, melancholy, confusion and loss we require each other now more than ever.

The reassurance of community – the human glue of the unity in the very word – is what we probably need most.

But tragically, all of the portents are that cohesion in politics and the community will be hard to find this extended, draining summer.