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As the nation winds down for a customary Christmas holiday across languorous days of beach and blistering heat set to the soundtrack of Test cricket and insect sounds, this year the country’s summer mood seems, sadly, like no other.

It would be a dramatic understatement to characterize the national temperament after the antisemitic violent assault on Australian Jews during Bondi Hanukah celebrations as one of simple discontent.

Across the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of Australian cities – a tenor of initial shock, sorrow and horror is segueing to anger and bitter polarization.

Those who had previously missed the often voiced fears of the Jewish community are now highly attuned. Similarly, they are attuned to reconciling the need for a far more urgent, vigorous 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 humanity is so sorely depleted. This is particularly so for those of us lucky never to have experienced the hatred and dread of faith-based persecution on this continent or elsewhere.

And yet the algorithms keep spewing at us the banal hot takes of those with inflammatory, divisive stances but little understanding at all of that profound fragility.

This is a time when I regret not having a stronger spiritual belief. I mourn, because having faith in humanity – in our potential for kindness – has failed us so painfully. A different source, a greater power, is required.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have witnessed such profound instances of human goodness. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The selflessness of bystanders. Emergency personnel – law enforcement and medical staff, those who ran towards the gunfire to aid fellow humans, some recognised but for the most part unnamed and unsung.

When the police tape still fluttered wildly all about Bondi, the necessity of social, faith-based and cultural unity was admirably championed by faith leaders. It was a message of compassion and acceptance – of unifying rather than splitting apart in a moment of antisemitic slaughter.

Consistent with the meaning of the Festival of Lights (illumination amid darkness), there was so much fitting reference of the need for hope.

Unity, light and love was the essence of faith.

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

And yet elements of the Australian polity responded so nauseatingly swiftly with division, blame and recrimination.

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

Witness the harmful message of division from veteran fomenters of societal discord, exploiting the attack before the site was even cold. Then read the statements of leadership aspirants while the probe was ongoing.

Politics has a formidable job to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is grieving and scared and looking for the hope and, not least, answers to so many questions.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was judged as probable, did such a large public Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a woefully inadequate protection? Like how could the accused attackers have multiple firearms in the residence when the security agency has so openly and repeatedly alerted of the danger of antisemitic violence?

How rapidly we were subjected to that cliched line (or iterations of it) that it’s individuals not weapons that kill. Of course, both things are true. It’s feasible to at the same time seek new ways to stop hate-fuelled violence and keep firearms away from its possible perpetrators.

In this city of profound beauty, of clear azure skies above sea and sand, the water and the beaches – our communal areas – may not look entirely familiar again to the many who’ve noted that famous Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s obscene bloodshed.

We long right now for understanding and meaning, for loved ones, and perhaps for the solace of beauty in art or nature.

This weekend many Australians are calling off holiday gathering plans. Quiet contemplation will seem more in order.

But this is perhaps somewhat counterintuitive. For in these days of anxiety, anger, melancholy, bewilderment and grief we require each other now more than ever.

The comfort 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 cohesion in public life and society will be hard to find this extended, enervating summer.