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While the nation settles into for a traditional Christmas holiday across languorous days of coast and blistering heat set to the background of Test cricket and insect sounds, this year the country’s summer atmosphere feels, sadly, like none before.

It would be a significant oversimplification to describe the national disposition after the anti-Jewish violent assault on Australian Jews during the beachside Hanukah celebrations as one of mere ennui.

Across the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of Australian cities – a tenor of initial surprise, sorrow and horror is shifting to fury and bitter division.

Those who had not picked up on the frequently expressed fears of the Jewish community are now acutely aware. Just as, they are attuned to balancing the need for a far more urgent, vigorous official fight against anti-Jewish hatred with the right to demonstrate against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a time for a national listening, it is now, when our belief in mankind is so sorely depleted. This is particularly so for those of us fortunate enough never to have endured the animosity and fear of faith-based targeting on this land or anywhere else.

And yet the social media feeds keep spewing at us the banal hot takes of those with blistering, polarizing views but no sense at all of that profound vulnerability.

This is a time when I lament not having a greater spiritual belief. I lament, because having faith in people – in mankind’s potential for compassion – has let us down so acutely. Something else, something higher, is required.

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

When the police tape still waved wildly all about Bondi, the imperative of community, religious and cultural unity was laudably championed by faith leaders. It was a message of love and acceptance – of unifying rather than splitting apart in a time of antisemitic slaughter.

Consistent with the symbolism of the Festival of Lights (light amid darkness), there was so much appropriate evocation of the need for lightness.

Unity, light and love was the message of faith.

‘Our shared community spaces may not look quite the same again.’

And yet elements of the political landscape reacted so disgustingly swiftly with division, finger-pointing and accusation.

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

Witness the dangerous message of division from longstanding agitators of Australian racial division, exploiting the attack before the crime scene was even cold. Then consider the statements of leadership aspirants while the probe was still active.

Government has a formidable task to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is grieving and scared and looking for the light and, not least, answers to so many questions.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was assessed as probable, did such a significant public Hanukah event go ahead with such a woefully insufficient security presence? Like how could the accused attackers have six guns in the family home when the domestic intelligence organisation has so publicly and repeatedly alerted of the danger of antisemitic violence?

How rapidly we were subjected to that tired argument (or versions of it) that it’s individuals not guns that cause death. Of course, both things are valid. It’s possible to simultaneously seek new ways to stop hate-fuelled violence and prevent firearms away from its potential perpetrators.

In this metropolis of profound splendor, of clear blue heavens above ocean and shore, the ocean and the beaches – our shared community spaces – may not look quite the same again to the multitude who’ve observed that famous Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s obscene bloodshed.

We long right now for understanding and meaning, for family, and perhaps for the solace of aesthetics in culture or nature.

This weekend many Australians are cancelling Christmas party plans. Reflective solitude will feel more in order.

But this is perhaps counterintuitively against instinct. For in these times of fear, outrage, melancholy, confusion and grief we require each other more than ever.

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

But sadly, all of the indicators are that unity in public life and society will be hard to find this extended, draining summer.