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While the nation settles into for a customary Christmas holiday across slow-moving days of beach and scorching heat set to the background of Test cricket and insect sounds, this year the country’s summer atmosphere seems, sadly, like none before.

It would be a significant understatement to describe the national disposition after the antisemitic violent assault on Jewish Australians during Bondi Hanukah festivities as one of mere ennui.

Throughout the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of Australian cities – a tone of immediate shock, sorrow and terror is shifting to fury and deep polarization.

Those who had not picked up on the often voiced fears of Australian Jews are now highly attuned. Similarly, they are attuned to reconciling the need for a much more immediate, energetic government and institutional crackdown against antisemitism with the freedom to demonstrate against genocide.

If ever there was a moment for a national listening, it is now, when our belief in mankind is so deeply depleted. This is particularly so for those of us fortunate enough never to have experienced the hatred and fear of religious and ethnic targeting on this land or elsewhere.

And yet the algorithms keep churning out at us the banal instant opinions of those with inflammatory, polarizing stances but little understanding at all of that profound fragility.

This is a period when I lament not having a stronger faith. I lament, because having faith in humanity – in our potential for kindness – has failed us so painfully. A different source, something higher, is required.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have witnessed such extreme examples of human goodness. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The selflessness of bystanders. Emergency personnel – law enforcement and paramedics, those who ran towards the gunfire to help others, some publicly hailed but for the most part anonymous and unheralded.

When the barrier cordon still waved wildly all about Bondi, the necessity of community, religious and cultural unity was admirably promoted by religious figures. It was a message of compassion and tolerance – of bringing together rather than dividing in a moment of antisemitic slaughter.

Consistent with the meaning of the Festival of Lights (light amid gloom), there was so much appropriate reference of the need for lightness.

Unity, hope and love was the essence of belief.

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

And yet elements of the political landscape responded so nauseatingly swiftly with fragmentation, finger-pointing and recrimination.

Some politicians gravitated straight for the pessimism, using tragedy as a cynical opportunity to question Australia’s migration rules.

Observe the dangerous message of disunity from veteran agitators of Australian racial division, capitalizing on the massacre before the site was even cold. Then read the words of leadership aspirants while the probe was still active.

Politics has a daunting task to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is mourning and scared and seeking the hope 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 insufficient protection? Like how could the alleged killers have six guns in the family home when the domestic intelligence organisation has so openly and consistently alerted of the danger of antisemitic violence?

How rapidly we were subjected to that cliched line (or versions of it) that it’s individuals not weapons that cause death. Naturally, both things are true. It’s feasible to at the same time seek new ways to stop violent bigotry and prevent firearms away from its possible actors.

In this metropolis of immense beauty, of pristine azure skies above ocean and sand, the water and the coastline – our communal areas – may not look entirely familiar again to the many who’ve noted that iconic Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s obscene bloodshed.

We yearn right now for understanding and significance, for family, and perhaps for the solace of aesthetics in culture or the natural world.

This weekend many Australians are calling off Christmas party plans. Quiet contemplation will feel more in order.

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

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

But sadly, all of the indicators are that cohesion in politics and society will be elusive this long, enervating summer.