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As the nation settles into for a traditional Christmas holiday during languorous days of beach and scorching heat accompanied by the soundtrack of sporting matches and insect sounds, this year the country’s summer atmosphere feels, unfortunately, like no other.

It would be a dramatic understatement to characterize the national disposition after the anti-Jewish violent assault on Jewish Australians during Bondi Hanukah celebrations as one of simple ennui.

Across the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of Australian cities – a tenor of immediate surprise, grief and terror is segueing to fury and bitter division.

Those who had not picked up on the frequently expressed concerns of the Jewish community are now acutely aware. Just as, they are attuned to balancing the need for a much more immediate, vigorous government and institutional fight against antisemitism with the right to peacefully protest against genocide.

If ever there was a time for a national listening, it is now, when our belief in mankind 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 spewing at us the trite hot takes of those with blistering, divisive stances but little understanding at all of that profound fragility.

This is a period when I lament not having a greater faith. I lament, because believing in people – in mankind’s capacity for kindness – has let us down so painfully. Something else, a greater power, is needed.

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 – police officers and paramedics, those who charged into the gunfire to aid fellow humans, some publicly hailed but for the most part unnamed and unsung.

When the police tape still fluttered wildly all about Bondi, the imperative of community, faith-based and cultural solidarity was laudably promoted by faith leaders. It was a call of love and tolerance – of unifying rather than dividing in a time of targeted violence.

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

Unity, light and compassion was the essence of belief.

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

And yet segments of the Australian polity reacted so disgustingly quickly with fragmentation, blame and accusation.

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

Witness the harmful rhetoric of division from longstanding agitators of Australian racial division, capitalizing on the attack before the crime scene was even cold. Then consider the words of political figures while the probe was ongoing.

Politics has a formidable task to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is grieving and frightened and looking for the light and, not least, answers to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the official terror alert was assessed as probable, did such a large 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 alerted of the threat of antisemitic violence?

How quickly we were treated to that cliched line (or versions of it) that it’s people not weapons that kill. Of course, both things are true. It’s possible to simultaneously seek new ways to prevent hate-fuelled violence and keep firearms away from its possible perpetrators.

In this city of immense splendor, of clear azure skies above ocean and sand, the ocean and the beaches – our shared community spaces – may not seem entirely familiar again to the multitude who’ve noted that iconic Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s obscene bloodshed.

We yearn right now for comprehension and significance, for family, and perhaps for the consolation of aesthetics in art or nature.

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

But this is perhaps counterintuitively counterintuitive. For in these days of fear, outrage, sadness, bewilderment and loss we need 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 long, draining summer.