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While Australia settles into for a traditional Christmas holiday across slow-moving days of coast and blistering heat set to the background of sporting matches and cicada song, this year the country’s summer mood seems, sadly, like no other.

It would be a dramatic understatement to describe the collective disposition after the antisemitic terrorist attack on Australian Jews during the beachside Hanukah festivities as one of mere ennui.

Throughout the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of Australian cities – a tenor of initial surprise, grief and terror is shifting to anger and deep polarization.

Those who had not picked up on the often voiced concerns of Australian Jews are now acutely aware. Similarly, they are sensitive to reconciling the need for a far more urgent, energetic government and institutional 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 belief in humanity is so deeply diminished. This is particularly so for those of us lucky never to have experienced the hatred and fear of faith-based targeting on this land or anywhere else.

And yet the social media feeds keep churning out at us the banal instant opinions of those with blistering, polarizing stances but little understanding at all of that terrifying vulnerability.

This is a period when I lament not having a stronger faith. I mourn, because believing in people – in our potential for kindness – has let us down so acutely. A different source, something higher, is required.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have seen such profound instances of human decency. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The bravery of those present. Emergency personnel – law enforcement and medical staff, those who charged into the danger to aid others, some recognised but for the most part unnamed and unheralded.

When the barrier cordon still fluttered wildly all about Bondi, the imperative of social, faith-based and cultural solidarity was admirably promoted by faith leaders. It was a call of love and acceptance – of bringing together rather than splitting apart in a time of antisemitic slaughter.

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

Togetherness, hope and compassion was the essence of belief.

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

And yet segments of the Australian polity responded so disgustingly swiftly with fragmentation, finger-pointing and accusation.

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

Observe the harmful rhetoric of disunity from longstanding agitators of societal discord, exploiting the attack before the site was even cold. Then consider the words of political figures while the probe was ongoing.

Politics has a daunting task to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is mourning and frightened and seeking the hope and, not least, explanations to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was assessed as likely, did such a significant open-air Hanukah event go ahead with such a woefully insufficient protection? Like how could the alleged killers have multiple firearms in the family home when the security agency has so publicly and repeatedly warned of the danger of targeted attacks?

How quickly we were subjected to that cliched argument (or iterations of it) that it’s individuals not weapons that cause death. Naturally, each point are true. It’s feasible to simultaneously seek new ways to stop hate-fuelled violence and keep guns 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 seem quite the same again to the many who’ve observed that iconic Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s obscene bloodshed.

We long right now for comprehension and meaning, for loved ones, and perhaps for the solace of aesthetics in art or the natural world.

This weekend many Australians are cancelling Christmas party plans. Quiet contemplation will seem more in order.

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

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

But tragically, all of the portents are that unity in public life and the community will be hard to find this extended, enervating summer.