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As the nation settles into for a customary Christmas holiday during languorous days of beach and blistering heat accompanied by the background of sporting matches and cicada song, this year the country’s summer atmosphere feels, unfortunately, like none before.

It would be a dramatic understatement to characterize the national temperament after the anti-Jewish violent assault on Australian Jews during Bondi 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 immediate shock, sorrow and terror is segueing to fury and bitter polarization.

Those who had previously missed the frequently expressed fears of Australian Jews are now acutely aware. Similarly, they are attuned to balancing the need for a far more urgent, vigorous government and institutional crackdown against anti-Jewish hatred with the right to demonstrate against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a time for a countrywide dialogue, it is now, when our belief in mankind is so deeply depleted. This is particularly so for those of us lucky never to have endured the hatred and dread of religious and ethnic targeting on this land or elsewhere.

And yet the algorithms keep churning out at us the banal hot takes of those with inflammatory, divisive views but no sense at all of that terrifying fragility.

This is a time when I lament not having a stronger spiritual belief. I lament, because having faith in people – in mankind’s capacity for compassion – has failed us so acutely. Something else, a greater power, is required.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have seen such extreme examples of human goodness. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The selflessness of bystanders. Emergency personnel – police officers and medical staff, those who ran towards the danger to aid fellow humans, some recognised but for the most part unnamed and unsung.

When the police tape still waved in the wind all about Bondi, the necessity of community, faith-based and cultural solidarity was laudably championed by faith leaders. It was a message of love and tolerance – of bringing together rather than dividing in a moment of targeted violence.

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

Unity, hope and love was the essence of faith.

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

And yet elements of the Australian polity responded so disgustingly swiftly with fragmentation, blame and accusation.

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

Witness the dangerous message of division from longstanding fomenters of societal discord, exploiting the massacre before the site was even cold. Then read the words of leadership aspirants while the probe was ongoing.

Government has a daunting job to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is mourning and scared and looking for the light and, not least, explanations to so many questions.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was assessed as probable, did such a large public Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a grossly insufficient security presence? Like how could the accused attackers have multiple firearms in the family home when the security agency has so openly and consistently alerted of the threat of antisemitic violence?

How rapidly we were subjected to that cliched line (or iterations of it) that it’s people not guns that cause death. Of course, each point are valid. It’s possible to simultaneously seek new ways to prevent hate-fuelled violence and keep guns away from its potential perpetrators.

In this city of immense splendor, of pristine azure skies above ocean and shore, the water and the coastline – our communal areas – may not seem quite the same again to the many who’ve observed that famous Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s horrific violence.

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

This weekend many Australians are calling off holiday gathering plans. Reflective solitude will seem more appropriate.

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

The comfort of togetherness – 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 the community will be hard to find this long, draining summer.