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As the nation settles into for a traditional Christmas holiday across slow-moving days of coast and blistering heat accompanied by the soundtrack of sporting matches and insect sounds, this year the country’s summer mood seems, unfortunately, like no other.

It would be a significant understatement to describe the collective temperament after the anti-Jewish violent assault on Jewish Australians during the beachside Hanukah celebrations as one of simple discontent.

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

Those who had not picked up on the frequently expressed concerns of the Jewish community are now acutely aware. Similarly, they are sensitive to balancing the need for a far more urgent, energetic official crackdown against antisemitism with the freedom to demonstrate against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a time for a national listening, it is now, when our faith in mankind is so deeply diminished. This is particularly so for those of us fortunate enough 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 trite hot takes of those with blistering, polarizing stances but no sense at all of that terrifying vulnerability.

This is a period when I lament not having a greater spiritual belief. I mourn, because believing in people – in mankind’s potential for kindness – has failed us so painfully. A different source, a greater power, is needed.

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. Emergency personnel – police officers and medical staff, those who charged into the danger to aid others, some publicly hailed but for the most part anonymous and unheralded.

When the police tape still fluttered wildly all about Bondi, the imperative of community, faith-based and cultural solidarity was laudably promoted by religious figures. It was a call of love and acceptance – of unifying rather than dividing in a moment of targeted violence.

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

Togetherness, hope and love was the essence of belief.

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

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

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

Witness the dangerous rhetoric of disunity from longstanding fomenters of societal discord, exploiting the attack before the site was even cold. Then read the statements of leadership aspirants while the probe was still active.

Politics has a formidable job to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is mourning and frightened and looking for the hope and, not least, explanations 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 insufficient security presence? Like how could the accused attackers have multiple firearms in the family home when the domestic intelligence organisation has so openly and repeatedly warned of the threat of targeted attacks?

How rapidly we were subjected to that cliched line (or versions of it) that it’s individuals not guns that cause death. Naturally, each point are valid. It’s possible to at the same time pursue new ways to stop violent bigotry and keep guns away from its possible actors.

In this metropolis of profound splendor, of clear azure skies above ocean and shore, the water and the coastline – our shared community spaces – may not look entirely familiar again to the many who’ve observed that iconic Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s obscene violence.

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

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

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

The comfort of togetherness – the binding force of the unity in the very word – is what we likely 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.