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While the nation winds down for a traditional Christmas holiday across languorous days of beach and blistering heat set to the soundtrack of Test cricket and insect sounds, this year the country’s summer atmosphere seems, unfortunately, like none before.

It would be a significant oversimplification to characterize 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 nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of Australian cities – a tenor of initial surprise, sorrow and terror is shifting to fury and deep division.

Those who had not picked up on the frequently expressed fears of the Jewish community are now highly attuned. Just as, they are sensitive to reconciling the need for a far more urgent, vigorous government and institutional crackdown against antisemitism with the freedom to peacefully protest against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a time for a countrywide dialogue, it is now, when our faith in humanity is so deeply diminished. This is especially so for those of us lucky never to have endured the animosity and dread of religious and ethnic persecution on this continent or anywhere else.

And yet the algorithms keep churning out at us the banal hot takes of those with inflammatory, polarizing stances 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 failed us so acutely. A different source, something higher, is required.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have witnessed such extreme examples of human decency. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The selflessness of bystanders. Emergency personnel – police officers and paramedics, those who charged into the danger to aid others, some recognised but for the most part anonymous and unheralded.

When the police tape still fluttered in the wind all about Bondi, the necessity of community, religious and cultural unity was admirably promoted by religious figures. It was a call of love and tolerance – of bringing together rather than dividing in a time of targeted violence.

In keeping with the meaning of the Festival of Lights (light amid gloom), there was so much fitting reference of the need for hope.

Togetherness, light and compassion was the message of belief.

‘Our public places may not look quite the same again.’

And yet elements of the political landscape responded so nauseatingly quickly with division, finger-pointing and accusation.

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

Observe the dangerous message of disunity from longstanding agitators of Australian racial division, capitalizing on the attack before the crime scene was even cold. Then read the words of political figures while the probe was still active.

Politics has a formidable task to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is grieving and frightened and seeking the hope and, not least, answers to so many questions.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was assessed as likely, did such a significant open-air Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a grossly insufficient security presence? Like how could the alleged killers have multiple firearms in the family home when the domestic intelligence organisation has so publicly and consistently warned of the danger of antisemitic violence?

How rapidly we were subjected to that tired argument (or iterations of it) that it’s people not weapons that kill. Naturally, both things are valid. It’s feasible to simultaneously pursue new ways to stop violent bigotry and keep firearms away from its possible perpetrators.

In this city of immense beauty, of clear blue heavens above ocean and sand, the ocean and the beaches – our communal areas – may not look quite the same again to the multitude who’ve noted that iconic Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s obscene bloodshed.

We yearn right now for understanding and significance, for loved ones, and perhaps for the consolation of aesthetics in art or the natural world.

This weekend many Australians are cancelling Christmas party plans. Reflective solitude will seem more appropriate.

But this is perhaps counterintuitively counterintuitive. For in these times of anxiety, outrage, sadness, bewilderment and grief we need each other more than ever.

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

But tragically, all of the portents are that unity in politics and society will be elusive this extended, draining summer.