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As the nation settles into for a customary Christmas holiday across languorous days of beach and scorching heat set to the soundtrack of Test cricket and insect sounds, this year the country’s summer mood seems, unfortunately, like none before.

It would be a dramatic oversimplification to describe the collective disposition after the antisemitic violent assault on Jewish Australians during the beachside Hanukah festivities as one of mere discontent.

Across the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of Australian cities – a tone of immediate surprise, sorrow and terror is segueing to fury and deep division.

Those who had previously missed the frequently expressed concerns of Australian Jews are now acutely aware. Just as, they are sensitive to balancing the need for a far more urgent, vigorous government and institutional fight against anti-Jewish hatred with the right to peacefully protest against genocide.

If ever there was a moment for a national listening, it is now, when our belief in mankind is so sorely depleted. This is especially so for those of us lucky never to have experienced the hatred and fear of faith-based persecution on this land or elsewhere.

And yet the social media feeds keep churning out at us the trite hot takes of those with inflammatory, polarizing views but little understanding at all of that terrifying vulnerability.

This is a time when I lament not having a stronger faith. I mourn, because believing in people – in our potential for kindness – has failed us so acutely. Something else, a greater power, is required.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have seen such extreme instances of human goodness. The heroism of individuals. The bravery of those present. Emergency personnel – law enforcement and paramedics, those who charged into the danger to aid fellow humans, some publicly hailed but for the most part unnamed and unsung.

When the police tape still fluttered wildly all about Bondi, the necessity of community, faith-based and ethnic solidarity was admirably promoted by religious figures. It was a message of love and acceptance – of bringing together rather than dividing in a moment of antisemitic slaughter.

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

Unity, hope and compassion was the message of faith.

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

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

Some politicians gravitated straight for the pessimism, using the atrocity as a calculating chance to question Australia’s migration rules.

Witness the dangerous rhetoric of division from veteran fomenters of societal discord, capitalizing on the attack before the site was even cold. Then read the statements of political figures while the probe was still active.

Government has a formidable job to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is grieving and frightened and looking for the hope and, not least, answers to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the official terror alert was assessed as likely, did such a significant open-air Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a woefully inadequate protection? Like how could the accused attackers have multiple firearms in the family home when the security agency has so publicly and repeatedly alerted of the threat of antisemitic violence?

How rapidly we were treated to that tired line (or iterations of it) that it’s individuals not guns that kill. Naturally, both things are valid. It’s possible to simultaneously pursue new ways to stop violent bigotry and keep firearms away from its potential actors.

In this metropolis of profound splendor, of pristine blue heavens above sea and sand, the ocean and the coastline – our shared community spaces – may not seem entirely familiar again to the many who’ve noted that iconic Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s horrific bloodshed.

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

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

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

The comfort 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 public life and the community will be hard to find this long, draining summer.