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As Australia settles into for a traditional Christmas holiday during languorous days of beach and scorching heat set to the background of Test cricket and cicada song, this year the country’s summer mood feels, unfortunately, like none before.

It would be a dramatic oversimplification to characterize the collective temperament after the anti-Jewish violent assault on Jewish Australians 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 horror is shifting to anger and deep division.

Those who had not picked up on the frequently expressed fears of Australian Jews are now highly attuned. Just as, they are sensitive to balancing the need for a far more urgent, energetic government and institutional fight against antisemitism with the freedom 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 deeply diminished. This is particularly so for those of us lucky never to have experienced the animosity and fear of faith-based persecution on this continent or anywhere else.

And yet the algorithms keep churning out at us the trite instant opinions of those with blistering, polarizing stances but no sense at all of that terrifying vulnerability.

This is a time when I lament not having a stronger faith. I lament, because believing in people – in mankind’s potential for compassion – has failed us so painfully. A different source, a greater power, is needed.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have witnessed such profound examples of human decency. The heroism of individuals. The selflessness of bystanders. Emergency personnel – police officers and medical staff, those who ran towards the danger to help fellow humans, some publicly hailed but for the most part anonymous and unheralded.

When the barrier cordon still waved wildly all about Bondi, the imperative of community, faith-based and cultural solidarity was admirably championed by faith leaders. It was a message of compassion and tolerance – 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, light and compassion was the essence of belief.

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

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

Some elected officials moved straight for the darkness, using the atrocity as a cynical opportunity to challenge Australia’s immigration policies.

Witness the dangerous rhetoric of division from veteran fomenters of Australian racial division, exploiting the attack before the crime scene was even cold. Then consider the words of political figures while the investigation was ongoing.

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

Like why, when the official terror alert was assessed as probable, did such a significant open-air Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a woefully inadequate security presence? Like how could the accused attackers have six guns in the family home when the domestic intelligence organisation has so publicly and consistently warned of the danger of targeted attacks?

How rapidly we were subjected to that tired argument (or versions of it) that it’s individuals not weapons that kill. Of course, both things are true. It’s possible to at the same time pursue new ways to stop violent bigotry and keep firearms away from its possible perpetrators.

In this metropolis of immense beauty, of clear blue heavens above sea and sand, the water and the beaches – our communal areas – may not look entirely familiar again to the multitude who’ve noted that famous Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s horrific bloodshed.

We long right now for understanding and meaning, for family, and perhaps for the consolation of beauty in art or nature.

This weekend many Australians are cancelling holiday gathering plans. Reflective solitude will feel more appropriate.

But this is perhaps somewhat against instinct. For in these times of anxiety, anger, sadness, confusion and grief we require each other more than ever.

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

But tragically, all of the indicators are that cohesion in politics and society will be hard to find this extended, enervating summer.